Logic

So I realize that I haven't been the most vocal person in the last two months. Maybe no one really noticed anyway because the dog-days of summer are just wiping your conscience free of the concept of time?

Either way, I feel compelled to write something. So what happens if I don't have anything to write. Let’s just have a glass of gin and juice, pick a cool word and let the writing times roll.

Gin and Juice - check.

Cool word...hmmm, how about Earth.

C'est tres cool, everyone loves the Earth.

Here we go. A few of you may have known that I spent 4 years working with my Dad, I took care of Springbank Cheese in Calgary. It was a great time, and all the while I kept my ear to the ground for what was happening around the world - http://www.globalissues.org

In January 2006, I fulfilled my two year resignation plan and headed to Quebec. My heart wasn't in it anymore, and not just the company, but development also. I didn't know if poverty alleviation was what I wanted to focus on.

Off I went to Quebec, completely directionless. All I knew was that my soft side wanted to help people, because that made me happy. My logical side wanted to prevent the extinction of the human race. Sure, maybe I'm a bit drastic, but I think I see some large indications that good ol' mankind was heading in the wrong direction. My first instinct wasn't to become a monk, it was to change peoples minds about consumerism. I read a few books and watched every TEDTalk I could - http://www.ted.com

After all that, consumerism still bothered me...but wait a minute, isn't there something called supply and demand? So if you want to live a consumeristic lifestyle, you'll just have to pay for it. As the Earth's supply goes down, the price will go up. (even for things which should be fundamental human rights, such as chocolate, cheese, HONEY, and beer)

Problem solved.

So what is the real problem?

There is an irreversible component. If you believe that driving your car causes global warming, and that this could trigger an ice-age or at least economic hardships, then hippity hoppity, lets stop driving our cars or at least reduce the greenhouse gases associated with it.

So maybe I believe in global warming to be man made, or maybe its caused by solar flares on the sun...either way, there are millions of people and enough money behind solving that issue. Plus, it's possible that one technical discovery could actually solve all the worlds energy problems AND global warming concerns. And it could happen almost overnight, something like....nano-solar? http://www.nanosolar.com/

What else could the real problem bee? What else is irreversible?

Pollution, species extinction, war?

It was interesting to see that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a guy who started a Bank which helped extremely poor people get a fair price for the business they ran. Nobel peace prize and Banking, hmm, but where is the link? Peace and Poverty, Poverty and Peace. How are they related?

Turns out, the whole globalization thing is a fairly new phenomenon. Back before the advent of the airplane, the world never had to think as a whole. In fact, there are only two reasons to consider the people in a different part of the world.

1. WAR

2. TRADE

Either you worried about them attacking, or you worried about the cost of those things which can't be produced locally, hence you needed to trade for them.

So there you have it. WAR and TRADE, now if TRADE is related to wealth, and WAR is obviously related to peace...then it becomes clear that Peace and Poverty must be related. (ok, I'll leave it to the Nobel Prize folk for explaining in detail, maybe its not perfectly clear)

Either way, the conclusion is that More TRADE = less WAR.

or

Less Poverty = more Peace.

My decision was to work towards less poverty via more trade. The trade doesn't need to be international per se, but the further away the customer the more peace it promotes. The underlying reason why more trade creates more wealth is because it causes specialization which effectively leads to more efficiency. Instead of owning my own land, planting my own crops, watering, cropping, storing and cooking my own food, I can divide up these jobs and choose to do what I do best. Maybe storing is my specialty. If I work with 50 people, the sum of our output can be triple what we could do individually. This is REAL wealth, there aren't even complicated outside forces to dispute it. With specialization comes technology, the more time you spend doing one repeated task, the more you can benefit from a tool which can help you do that one thing.

Engineers Without Borders - Promoting human development through access to technology.

Indeed a shameless plug for EWB, but maybe there is something to it?

Whatever the Logic, the work I'm doing feels right, so maybe I'm really just following a feeling.

Around The Yard

So around the yard also means around the factory.

Laure-Eloise convinced me that I should put some more pictures up.

The guys stirring the honey before we 'process' it.

Unloading the new machine for bottling the honey.

A (yellow) flower.

Me on a Sunday afternoon.

I have a few ideas rolling around that I hope to share on my next post, coming soon. The weather in Lusaka has changed dramatically in the last 3 weeks, we now get +30 during the day and the low at night hardly requires a blanket. The hot season is upon us.

The Honey Team

his is what its all about...

well ok, maybe it was just nice to have a lot of friends around. This last week I was lucky enough to attend the Zambian Agriculture and Commercial Show, which was amazing. There were a lot of development organizations, but also a lot of businesses.

Rogers checks out a 30 ton trailer

We got tired of walking around so went to have a few beers and watch the marching band from the bar.

This Wednesday & Thursday we had our Year Plan Meeting for Forest Fruits at a lodge 50km out of town. The meeting itself was amazing, I was asked to facilitate (which was a good experience) and it was really good to see what everyones ideas were. I think we all left the meeting with enthusiasm and now we have a vision to work towards for the next 12 months.

Vision, ideas, sharing... those are all great, but for sure the best part was seeing everyone again. I have spent just 5 weeks up in Mwinilunga, but while I was there I made friends with the management team and now I realize just how much I missed them. I took some pictures during the breaks and now I'd like to introduce...

The Honey Team

starting with Evans - he was the one who saved me from the red ants

Chiko - knows all 6000 beekeepers and is a madman on the motorbike

Alice - holds down the fort and keeps us from starving.

Matimba - a real sucker for new gadgets (zen being the latest)
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Womba - still giving it 100% at 8 months pregnant!
Mr. Jalata - he is just too nice
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???? - is this guy ever going to cut that hair. ..
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Chris - my pushup buddy who's trying to shift some belly weight into muscle mass

Dan Ball - busy eating and eating before his wife (Barb) returns from Canada

So ya, no picture of Barb, she should be enjoying her time in Algonquin park right about now.

--Insert picture here--

Barb - the mom/nurse to the bunch who keeps us in good health.

We got to see lions, giraffes, elephants, zibras and gazelles all in one hour!

And then before we knew it our 2 days were up.

A great team, a great place and an exciting year to come.

What is Development to me?

"You have a great placement"

This is what my friend Hans told me after spending a couple of days at my place since he was temporarily homeless in Lusaka because the house he was living in was sold and his landlord inconveniently forgot to inform him.

The word placement shocked me. I really don't think of it as a 'placement', to me its become my life, and I have to agree, I have a great life.

Why am I here?

I'm here because I care and I feel I have something to contribute to development. (and the thought of returning to Canada to engage in a job that doesn't directly contribute... sorta frightens me)

What is development to me?

Not exactly sure, but if I start with the basics - I feel that everyone wants friends, health, knowledge and a decent income. (friends are plentiful, so I figure its about having a job, healthcare & education) Problem is that not everyone has access to these, nor do they have the power to gain access.

So this results in two fundamental things. 1 - power, 2 - ability to get power. Since you can get number 1 if you have number 2, then I guess even more fundamentally, development is allowing people the ability to get power.

What gives you power? Of course this depends on the situation. It could be your wealth, or it could be your age, gender, education, language, good looks (or other characteristics like strength, athleticism, musical talent, etc), your nationality, race, religion, location, caste or even your friends. In Canada the amount by which any of these can empower a person is different than it is in Zambia. Race, religion and age in Canada mean relatively little compared to what they mean in Zambia. Many of these are things you are born with, others you can obtain, but to obtain them you often need to have access to health care, education or a good job. Back to square one.

Wealth is the usually the easiest to translate into power regardless of the situation.

(As an aside - I feel healthcare and education are critical to a good life and the basic levels are very much the role of government. But if your government isn’t capable of providing this, then development projects should fill this gap.)

A solution that actually works?

There are a few organizations here that are funded by Canadians/westerners and are hoping to address the issue of income generation. The magical formula which has worked in the past, goes something like this. Paul and his wife Samantha are farmers that live in a village, they have 2 hectares of land to grow corn, peanuts and vegetables along with a few chickens and cows. They don't have access to health care or good education for their kids, plus they have no savings. But, life is actually pretty good right now, there is food, shelter and you can hear laughter coming from the kids playing outside. This is the case until someone gets sick or there is a drought or a flood. They have very little capital to deal with problems.

Now for the magical part: all you have to do is introduce them to someone who wants to buy something they are producing, this will allow them to save some money (aka. connect them to a market). Or introduce them to someone selling seeds or fertilizer or vet services so they can produce more to save some money (aka. access to better inputs). Or even better, have Paul and Samantha create a cooperative with all their neighbours so they can save money by bulking their inputs or crops to save on transportation costs.

My impression is that there are hundreds of organizations across Africa trying to do one of or all of these things.

It is a bit like a dating service, the organization searches for sellers and looks for buyers and then introduces the two. Of course its not so simple, they also have to facilitate the process and remove some of the risk that exists on both sides so that in the event that it doesn't work out, they haven't actually made things worse. And to make it even more difficult, the organization is on a contract with a donor who has given just enough money to get it right in 2 or 3 seasons.

A common problem is that the organization ends up not only facilitating these relationships, they actually become an integral part of the relationship...like the role of the telephone, without them, the buyer and seller don't communicate and so after 3 years with some successes, the donor feels good and the org. is happy but if you check in a year or two later you find that the relationships fell apart and it was all for not. Another common problem is the org. becomes the transportation from the field to town, which again is a critical function. Either way, there is pressure from the donor for results, and there is pressure to 'buy-down' the risks to the farmers, so the org. ends up stepping in and becoming part of the relationship and the whole thing becomes unsustainable.

1 year after the project ends, Samantha and Paul are no better off and the org. is out looking for more funding to start another project. Oh ya, and the donor feels good because they were told that the results were good.

Donor => pretty happy (seems to be good results, don't need to give any more money)
Org. => sorta happy (they had good paying jobs for 3 years)
Farmers => hardly happy (lot of effort into changing lives, few benefits seen)

Is there a way all three stakeholders can be really happy?

Sustainability.

What can be sustainable?

It's only a theory, but I think more organizations should just accept that they will become part of the relationship and they should try to make money doing it. If they aren't able to make money at it, then how do they expect a business to make money at it? Whether its transportation, personal contacts, food processing, access to inputs...whatever it is, an organization that employs educated people and is able to invest some money in the activity, is much better suited to turn a profit than a business that is already strapped for time, labour and investment capital. If the organization is successful, they can use the profits for funding a new project or they can streamline the operation and put it up for sale, and maybe even one of the employees will see that they can make a living from it?

If a profit can be made, then everyone is really happy.

Learning

If not, then something different should be done, but at least there are no false impressions about sustainability.

The current system is blind, no one knows how to measure success accurately and therefore it makes learning very difficult.

Where I fit

My partner organization is called Forest Fruits. It is a private enterprise which provides training, inputs, transportation, communication, processing, exporting and soon bottling. As a whole, it is profitable and therefore sustainable. It is buying from 6000 farmers who earn about $1 a day and just maybe the extra income allows them to save up a little for their future.

In essence, the 6000 farmers use to have no choice in where to sell there goods. Now, every year, Forest Fruits shows up and offers to buy their products. ie. A business now wants what they have, and to me, this is empowerment.

Kickin it by the Lake

A couple weeks ago, I was pealed away from my work here in the capital city (Lusaka) to go on a 10 day excursion involving 2 countries, 20 Candians and 2 EWB retreats. After regretting the idea of being away from work for such a long time, I quickly got over it when we arrived at our destination on Lake Malawi.

The restaurant on Senga Bay is an old house without a roof!

A picture of the restaurant from 'outside'.

The EWB Longterm Volunteer Crew.

So then it was back to Zambia for the short term volunteer retreat. I thought there was no way it could get any better than Senga Bay in Malawi, but I was proven wrong. The location is right on a point that juts out into Lake Kariba, and is part of a town called Siavonga. The owner is an architect of some sort and has built a house for his wife and three kids which looks a bit like a castle. They run a children's inspirational camp here and is a development project.

The owner's house at the camp in Siavonga.

The fire pit sits right on the point and is beside an Amarula fruit tree.

Looking out at Lake Kariba from our "meeting room" in Siavonga.

Up and coming is the potential that I'll have a work visa in my hands within a week, and this Sunday me and some EWB folk will be having dinner with Ian Smillie.

The New Truck

Just three weeks later and our new-used truck is looking good.

Our Mechanics proudly stand beside their work.

Photo for Mom

I was speaking with my Mom on the phone and said I'd send her a photo of what it looked like at the very moment. Turns out there was a nice sunset.