Sunday, March 25, 2007

Pamba Time: Part II


Later that morning I met a 65 year-old woman who had just finished weeding one of her cotton plots. In Sukuma she explained to Charles that she had been cultivating cotton for 40 years. This woman told us that cotton is good for people when they are paid at the point of purchase. If they have to wait months or even years for payment, as she has in the past, her view of the crop is much less favourable. A man from a neighbouring village walked up and joined our group. His cotton failed completely during the drought last year. He was able to come up with enough cash to pay out-of-pocket for seeds this season, but he does not have enough money to pay for a single application of pesticide. Currently, he does not even have enough cash on hand – 5000 TZS – to join the new Savings and Credit Cooperative scheme (SACCOS). If he did, he would have access to credit for pesticides. Additionally, he has not seen any extension agents from any of the companies or from the District. Zero access to credit and extension, and adverse climatic events, are only several of many factors that keep this man poor.

Just up the road on a hill I then witnessed a farmer spraying pesticides on his field. Charles and Danstan explained that his crop was infested with bollworms. He too was barefoot, and wore no protective gear while applying the spray. While this man did have the money to purchase additional pesticide applications, Charles noted that his investments were likely for naught. Based upon the advanced stage of the bollworm infestation, and insights garnered over twenty years of field experience in the district, Charles predicted that this farmer’s yields were set to be under 100 kg/acre. Assuming he is paid 320 TZS per kilo, a higher than average price, his net at the farm gate will be thin. He might net less than $15 Canadian per acre for many weeks of hard manual labour. A few kilometers away I met with victims of another type of infestation: aphids. This young family was attempting to rid their crop of the scourge, but they too had not seen any extension agents or company people until we walked up. This factor of impoverishment – lack of extension services – was clearly not a minor one.

Later we visited a Village Executive Officer. He sang the praises of cotton and argued that it was relatively more beneficial for farmers to produce than other cash crops due to the evidently high level of competition amongst the buyers. The VEO argued that the more cotton that people grow the richer they are. We moved on to visit one of these ‘rich’ farmers in another area. Approaching a smallholding that was dominated by cotton plants, we introduced ourselves to a man with a massive family. He had two beautiful wives and eight children between the ages of two and ten. The man noted that with eleven mouths to feed things get quite tight each year in the months leading up to harvest. He explained that they had kidogo sana (very little) food on hand, but that they are surviving better than in previous years. This farmer had invested his past cotton earnings heavily in cattle and is now the proud owner of twenty cows. However, his houses are in disrepair and he does not have the money to purchase additional pesticides this season. The farmer’s failure to invest in production is a factor that impoverishes his family. His wives also work the fields quite hard, but do not seem to control the earnings from their work. Consequently, a skewed intra-household resource distribution impoverishes these women.

Our meeting with this large family was also notable as the parents broke out in hysterics at the mention of maskini (poverty). After settling down, the two women explained that they did not think that it was possible to remove poverty from cotton production. I wagered a guess that poverty was not a usual subject of conversation in their area. Also of note was the man’s name: he was called “Maendeleo”. In Swahili, maendeleo means development or progress, and it was enshrined in Mwalimu Nyerere's policies. Before we left I passed one 500 TZS note to each of the women, and one to the man. My colleagues at the ESRF in Dar, and several of my interviewees, advised me earlier this year that I should always leave a little something with cash crop producers after an interview. In this case the typical 500 TZS did not seem to be enough.

After traveling through a large forested area (msitu) we met with one of Copcot’s assistant cashiers. According to her first-hand account of the marketplace some farmers will travel more than 7 km with seed cotton wrapped in bundles on their head. She explained that only the richest farmers – perhaps 5% of total sellers – hire labourers to carry their produce to market. Cotton farmers that sell early in the season also become disgruntled as the season progresses and prices rise. Sometimes they confront the cashiers and demand more money. She claimed that it was easy for her to tell the bigger farmers from the poorer ones based upon the things they have with them in the market, including their clothes. It seems that shoes or the lack thereof are a useful guide to ascertaining a farmer's relative success.

As we drove off, Charles and Danstan pointed out the lack of electricity in all but a few villages in the district, and we attempted to guesstimate just how many cotton producers might have generators or televisions. As we were pondering the TV issue, I told Charles to hit the brakes when I saw the silhouettes of what looked to be a gang of young men clubbing away at the weeds against the backdrop of a setting sun. I walked up to them and introduced myself as per normal. Nilisema (I said): Habari za kazi (how’s work)? Jina langu Adam. Mimi ni mwanafunzi (I’m a student). Mimi natoka Canada (from Canada). Jina lake (what’s your name)? Habari za nyumbani (how is your home)? As my eyes settled on the group I realized that the leader was in his early twenties, but that the rest of the crew were half his height and that they were no more than ten years old. The man claimed that these boys were a team that could be hired for 1000 TZS for an afternoon. I asked Danstan if that figure could be believed, and my suspicions were raised further when none of the boys would speak to us. Instead, they stared intently at the man, and several appeared to be fearful. Much of the field had not been weeded yet, and Danstan commented that this could be one of the reasons he had ‘retained’ the boys. I was disturbed by the fact that they were children, and not young teenagers. I believe that I subsequently fell into a little bit of shock as we drove away towards the ginnery. Coupled with some minor heat exhaustion, I was spent. As I pumped fluids all night in a way that producers on the other side of the compound’s walls could not, I was quite disturbed. I knew that people like Donald Max were doing what little they could to reinvest in the community. But I also knew that few people in the business shared his sense his corporate social responsibility. With little to no NGO presence or ethical production systems in Geita, the prospects for many producers seemed grim.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Pamba Time


Today I realized one of my dreams. I met with several dozen people in Geita District that rely directly or indirectly upon sales of seed cotton. Two members of Copcot Tanzania’s operations team, Charles Theodory and Danstan Mugashe, took me on this tour. Danstan acted as an interpreter with Swahili speakers while Charles drove and also did interpretation for the older people we met that were more comfortable speaking in the Sukuma language.

On our way to see how people were getting on with an embryonic Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCOS), perhaps ten kilometres from Geita town, I was surprised to see a man lying in the middle of the road at the bottom of a hill. As we slowed to check out the situation several people gathered near him. We learned from a bystander that a bicycle traveling at high speed down the hill had apparently hit him. There was no sign of the bike or the rider. Charles and Danstan surveyed the scene and concluded that we should move along without offering to help. They rationalized this failure to act by noting our proximity to the town. Over the past years people have been ambushed in the forested areas surrounding Geita and they did not want me to experience banditry first-hand.

As we pushed further into the countryside I took note of the incredibly small farm sizes. Most smallholders seemed to be cultivating no more than a hectare. Production on all the farms also appeared to be quite diversified. People were cultivating maize, cassava, legumes, sweet potatoes and in the lower areas, rice. Rows of sisal, a large spiky-looking cash crop, marked the borders between many farms. I saw quite a few pamba (cotton) fields on the higher ground. On each smallholding where cotton was grown, pamba fields seemed to account for anywhere between ¼ to ¾ of cultivated land.

As we headed towards a ridge, off to the left under the glaring sun I glimpsed a team of five younger men swinging their jembes (hoes) in unison. They were working together to weed their cotton fields. As Charles, Danstan and I approached the men dropped their hoes and came to greet us. None had shoes and all were quite thin. The man whose field we were standing in was no more than five feet tall. He told us that he was in his early twenties, and that he and his friends had wives and children to feed, save for the youngest man who was not yet lucky enough to have a wife. He hoped that they were going to have a better harvest this season than they had during the drought last year. Members of the group complained about the expense of pesticides and their inability to pay for fertilizers that would increase their yields. When I asked if any other people had come to offer advice about production they told me that we were the first to appear their fields in 2007.

I then sought permission from the group to take a picture. They agreed. With my back to the sun I captured several stunning images. As I snapped these photos I noticed for the first time that one of the men was wearing a second-hand t-shirt with the word “Gettysburg” written on the front in bold. The irony was simply overwhelming. Here was a man working with a hoe in East Africa in 2007. The prices he will receive for his seed cotton at the market will be lower again this year due to the global glut that partly results from the United States' cotton subsidy scheme. Interestingly, the US government defeated the slave-owning cotton plantation owners at Gettysburg nearly 150 years ago. Now the US cotton support policy is one of the factors that keep this man looking like a slave of old: scrawny, wearing ragged clothing and swinging a hoe. The imposition of free market policies on Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, often at the behest of the United States, crushed the domestic textile and clothing industries in this region and led to East Africa’s reliance on second-hand clothing imports. As I stood in an important cotton-producing zone watching men dressed in used garments from abroad sweat it out, I found myself questioning the rationality of the current model. I wondered why many policymakers the world-over would consider the argument that textiles and clothing should be produced where cotton is grown to be too idealistic or even irrational. Certainly it is economically rational for cotton producers to purchase used clothing right now. It is also their only option, and an option that condemns Tanzania to a low value-added future. It really struck a foul note to see a man working his tail off clothed in a garment that advertised his oppressor’s tourist destination. As you can tell, seeing ground zero of the global economy was quite a shock, and I’m only just now collecting my thoughts.

I have much more to write about 22 March. I will continue to clean up my diary from that day and publish bits of it here. Right now, I have to move on. I’m sitting in Mwanza and will be heading out to Shinyanga this afternoon. I hope to meet with two of the organic operators in that region over the coming days. More soon!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The Fourth 'C'


As I prepare to head out on my first ginnery tour today, it is dawning on me that I am learning about much more than globalization, cotton and poverty here in East Africa. I have now interviewed over forty people at length. All of the researchers, academics, civil servants, regulators, consultants, nongovernmental service deliverers, civil society advocates and market players that I have listened to have taught me a lot about my topic. Beyond research, these strong and impressive people have also got me thinking about where I am going with my life. I have yet to interview anyone whose position I would consider uninteresting or boring. The politics of what they do intrigues me. It has also been fascinating to observe the various ways that these people impart their knowledge to a mzungu (white guy) that can only ‘sema kwa kiswahili kidogo sana’ (speak in Swahili a little bit). Sometimes I find myself wondering if a shaggy headed and privileged graduate student looking for answers will ever stumble into my office. Assuming that I have an office and some sort of worthy reputation in the future, I would welcome such a person with open arms and give them all the time in the world. Now that I have benefited from so many tête-à-têtes, I know that it is incumbent upon me to give back.

Prior to this trip I did not concern myself too much with giving. I took pride in the fact that my research focused on the meaning of poverty and the factors that keep people poor, and was hopeful that I would be able to produce knowledge that could be used to help people overcome the things that have impoverished them. However, as with any academic work, this project also aimed to advance my career, and at times, this latter facet was all-consuming. Somewhere between jumping through the hoops in the politics department at McMaster, applying for awards, polishing articles for publication consideration and encountering the dreaded ethics board I forgot the meaning of community. I was certainly reading and writing about a marginalized global community – 100 million people rely upon cotton production for their livelihoods – but my C.V. building was blinding me to the fact that I was missing out on engaging with communities in my own life. I was not really interacting with my colleagues at McMaster, my old friends from Collingwood, Queen’s and York, or with people in my Wellesley Street neighbourhood. I had become what several of my old professors would call an “academic climber”. Looking back on this period, it is clear to me that I was achieving my objectives in an isolated and disconnected way, and that I really was only ‘successful’ at self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. I am finally learning that success is not just individualistic or about personal advancement.

My Dad used to say that there were three things that people needed to be successful: courage, confidence and concentration. He called it the three ‘Cs’, and the formula could be applied to activities as diverse as learning how to drive, writing papers, building businesses or even the dilemmas of family life. My Dad was and continues to be a pillar of a community. Living in Collingwood, it was so obvious to him that people had to be connected and engaged with their surroundings that he did not include this fourth and all-important ‘C’ in his dictum. During my high school years I was really part of a community at the YMCA. Coaching the swim team and the Special Olympians, teaching three year-olds how to swim and lifeguard duties kept me interacting and giving back. During my twenties such community engagement has been sporadic. It briefly flickered while I was living in Sydney, when I was politically active at Queen’s and at the Vaughan Road housing collective in Toronto. As a treeplanter, and at most other times during the past decade, I was an individualistic prick. Perhaps this confessional can help me to move beyond the past, and embrace a brighter, more fulfilling future.

I have just returned to Mwanza refreshed from another long weekend with Mireille. We spent her birthday in Entebbe and Kampala. As a teacher, a friend and a lover she is helping me to find the balance and unlearn my anti-social habits.

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Today was unbelievable. Never before have I seen such beautiful countryside. Mwanza is truly stunning. I actually saw quite a bit more of it than I should have. I made the mistake of getting on the wrong ferry out of Mwanza first thing this morning. I enjoyed the side-trip. Donald Max of Copcot Tanzania had arranged to transport me to his operation in Geita. Charles, one of his most experienced drivers, took me West after Donald helped me to get to the correct ferry terminus. En route with Charles I got to see thousands of young cotton plants in the fields on a virtually cloud free day in the heart of rainy season. I will remain in Geita for a few days to check out Copcot’s CSR work and learn about Donald’s operations. He is a consummate host.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Acknowledgements















Over the past two weeks I’ve found myself thinking more and more about the people that have made my work possible. Something about living comfortably in Dar es Salaam has helped me to appreciate my family and friends, and those that I rely upon for moral, intellectual and financial support, much more. The amount of sun that I am getting might be one of the root causes of this change. My new thankfulness might also stem from the many incredibly intense connections I’ve made here since arriving in January. It is also possible that I am simply paying more attention to social interactions. Each day several total strangers impart their vast knowledge to me. Listening intently to them, rather than learning exclusively from books or the Internet, is certainly helping me to feel like I am part of a community. Perhaps when my fieldwork winds down and I have to sit in front of my laptop day and night to pump out the dissertation I will once again find myself feeling like an isolated academic. Right now, however, I am engaging with people and am filled with gratitude. I hope that by writing several acknowledgements at this time I am not in some ways “putting the cart before the horse.” My doctoral supervisor, Dr. William D. Coleman, has warned me to not get ahead of myself in the past. He knows that I am a slow learner when it comes to the art of being patient. As I sit here at the New Mwanza Hotel near the shores of Lake Victoria while I wait to interview several key cotton sector insiders, I am concerned with two things. First, the pressing matter of whether I will eat my tilapia fried, poached, crumbed or king-sized. Second, my substantive preoccupation: the feeling that I need to express how grateful I am to all of you. I will work on my acknowledgements over the coming weeks and post them here. Sorry for being lax on the updates. I’ll post my thoughts on the past week soon!