Cottonundrum

Knowledge Mobilization

2011-05-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

It's been quite some time since I've had a chance to update this page. For those of you who might be interested in checking out my book on cotton, the introduction is available here. If you like what you see in the introduction to Governing Cotton: Globalization and Poverty in Africa, the book is available from the publisher and from sellers in the UK, the US, France, Germany and Canada. To disseminate the research and facilitate knowledge to action, I recently gave a talk at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and gave a copy of the book to Wits Department of International Relations. I subsequently moved on to conduct a seminar on my findings at Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), a Dar es Salaam-based think tank. The Business Times published reports on this event in advance of the seminar and after it took place, and a copy of the book was donated to the REPOA library. After Tanzania I moved on to Cameroon to give a talk to over fifty students and faculty at the University of Buea, and donated a copy of the book to their library. I am currently revising an article that compares corporate social responsibility efforts in Africa's cotton and timber sectors, and will post a new update when that is out.

Self-Absorbed in Dundas (aka “Fundas”)

2007-07-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

The word vainglorious is appearing evermore frequently in the press these days. Ego-tripping has always been prominent in the rich world but seems to have surpassed the tipping point in 2007. Perhaps this trend is rooted in the kind of self-glorification Facebook propagates. I bit the bullet and joined this evil self-promoting empire the other week. For me, the choice was actually a no-brainer as I have been guilty to the extreme of vainglory these past few years. The market for post-graduate academic and policy research consulting work demands that I project an image of success. As a grad student with contingent, flexible and part-time jobs on the horizon, this drive to brand myself a winner has sometimes been overwhelming. I am quite certain that my occasional obsession with this aspect of the biz pisses my colleagues off to some extent, if not my academic overlords, non-professional acquaintances and even my friends. With Facebook, the latest incarnation of my fixation, I made the choice to dive in not simply for the personal connectivity that it can enable. Making use of the site seemed also to be a good opportunity to create a few “backwards linkages” in my network. My thinking at the time was that some of the people that I had fallen apart from over many years of increasingly instrumental or career-oriented networking might be tempted to check out what I was up to. In hindsight, this rationale reeks of an individualism gone horribly wrong. That being said, I won’t be closing down my account anytime soon. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether this is an instance of cognitive dissonance or of Facebook’s increasingly insurmountable cultural “hegemony.” It’s likely a little bit of both….

The “culture” of self-centricity in this place is at the forefront of my mind these days due to the fact that it was quite absent during my time in Sénégal. Social living with Keba Faty’s wonderful family and his French expat researcher guests enabled me to approach life in an entirely new way. There is no place in his extended household for “gaining wealth and forgetting all but self.” Back when I was a treeplanter in Northern Ontario’s massive clear cuts I had previously lived a communal life. However, the nature of that dirty job – i.e. bending over for 8 cents per tree again and again to get my piece of the limited “pie” before someone else did – reinforced my selfishness. In Dakar I felt connected to those around me at a higher level. Gone were the barriers to community thrown up by suburbia and its fleet of so-called “private” gas guzzling transport containers. In their place was a teeming market where the sights and the scents drew my attention to the fact time and again that we are all in the same boat. French colonial heritage might also have had something to do with my experience. It was my first time living for an extended period with people who have grown together outside of what can be called the “Anglo-American” sphere of influence and individuality.

I worry these days about the extent to which North Americans are individualized and privatized. I am not sure if it is healthy that the solution to nearly every social or ecological ill on offer in the popular press seems to be market-based or rooted in the idea that people have to get busy helping themselves. I am getting fed up with hearing about the micro-level, peripheral successes of self-aggrandizing philanthropic entrepreneurs or “philanthropreneurs”, as The New York Times has dubbed them. The fact that the onus is being put on North American citizens to alter their consumption habits in order to save the planet, rather than on rent-seeking, non-innovative corporations that are supplying the public with outdated technologies such as the internal combustion engine, is also continual source of frustration. The need for substantive global level collective efforts to implement regulatory ideas about the global economy and the biosphere that have been floated for decades and that could very well advance the principles of global equality and intergenerational equity has never been starker. Yet the media continues to foster the notion that the star power of Oprah, Bono and Bill Gates is making more than a marginal difference. They have sung the praises of the latest Nobel Peace Prize winning “solution” for poor people across the South – that they should jump into debt through obtaining micro-finance in order to eventually climb the “ladder” out of poverty – at a time when there appears to be no end in sight to the astronomical levels of personal indebtedness amongst ostensibly “rich” consumers in the United States. The market for information is saturated with stories about the world that have been framed in a similar manner. Maybe someday more people will become aware of the limits of the current orgy of individualism. For example, the absurdity of excess individualism might become apparent when media “consumers” are implored to sponsor individual penguins atop of melting icebergs in order to facilitate their relocation via corporate-sponsored carbon neutral yachts to CFC-free cold storage pens at private “climate refugee” reserves. Or not. Financial types often point out the necessity and desirability of this pervasive force. As an individual, I agree with them. But I also believe that it must be balanced, as Karl Polanyi pointed decades ago in The Great Transformation, with an equally dominant community orientation. So, where’s the balance? I’m still trying to find it….

Hard Landing

2007-07-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

Leaving Senegal was much more difficult than I had anticipated. I spent my final evening in Dakar on a great three hour ocean view dinner date with Tina GASSAMA, one of my officemates at ENDA Diapol. While watching the sun set over the Atlantic and conversing in French we walked along the beach until a man seated near a dilapidated gate demanded to know where we were going. He looked me in the eye and explained that we had to turn around, as the rest of the beach was “property of Club Med.” I asked him if he told the hungry local sheep the same thing whenever they mistakenly venture on to the hallowed grounds of the global elite. I got the sense that my sarcastic words were somewhat lost in translation. We beat a hasty retreat to a fantastic restaurant and I proceeded to learn a little bit about what life is like for an Islamic woman holding down a research job while pursuing her Masters degree in development economics and helping to look after the everyday needs of her four brothers.

Back at Keba’s place I collected my baggage and deposited a few more things with his family, including the remains of my medical kit and a cell phone. Several family members had come down with malaria during the previous weeks and I implored Keba to invest in new mosquito nets. Saying my goodbyes I realized how lucky I was to have been immersed in the French language and in Senegalese culture with such happy people. On the street with all of my things they literally had to push me into the waiting taxi.

Having confirmed my flight twelve hours earlier I was worry-free, and as I walked through the typically sketchy scene at the airport on my way to the check in I was counting down the hours to the sushi dinner that awaited me in Toronto. After handing over my travel documents and turning up the volume on the Toure Kunda track I was listening to, the supervisor tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that I did not have the required documentation. Despite the fact that my name and seat number were already in the system and confirmed, he explained that he needed to have my paper-based ticket in his hands before he would let me board the plane. I only had a flight receipt, itinerary and confirmation in the system. After asking him to telephone South African Airways (SAA) Dakar downtown office, and being told that that was my responsibility, my blood pressure went up a notch.

As we walked back through security to the SAA airport office he pointed to a pay phone and told me I had better hurry or risk missing the flight. With no one available at the Dakar office to assist me on the phone – it was 12:30am on Sunday morning – I walked into the airport office and asked if there was anyone that could help me to get on the plane. I was notified that I would have to buy an entirely new ticket to Washington, and then purchase my onward journey from Washington to Toronto after my arrival at Dulles. They refused outright to call anyone at SAA on my behalf. At that point I lost my cool and in return received a lecture regarding customer service and how the concept only applies to those that do not resort to exasperated language. Relenting, I told them that I would purchase the new ticket and for some unknown reason I was advised that I could only obtain it through the Air Senegal International office next door. The people staffing that office subsequently swiped my credit card and issued me what I thought was the ticket.

Returning to the check in I was told that Air Senegal had only printed my boarding pass and that SAA still needed to see that I had in fact made the purchase. Once again I found myself outside of security imploring the Air Senegal staff to hurry while listening to the SAA Supervisor harangue me about my language. Just after they handed me the ‘real’ ticket and I observed that it was strangely dated the 25th of June rather than the correct date of 24 June, the Supervisor picked up his radio and instructed his team to close the flight. I bolted for the check in. Upon arrival I was told by numerous people to “come back again.” And then, having no other option available, I began to grovel in earnest. In French I explained to the Supervisor how he was most certainly right and that I was the dumbest rookie traveler South and West of the Sahara. I think he liked the self-deprecation, as before I knew it, I was on the tarmac watching the stairs being backed up to the plane and its sealed door being reopened a full hour after the flight had been scheduled to depart. Relieved to be in my seat I contemplated the many lessons that I could learn from this experience (such as the lingering importance of paper in an era of digital reservation systems) and wondered if the whole event had simply been an elaborate scam or if there were other reasons beyond my own stupidity it had been so physically difficult to leave Africa this time.

After shelling out at Dulles for the home stretch I arrived in Toronto ready for an amazing Bloor Street sushi experience. During my time in Dar es Salaam I did not make it to Tanzania’s sushi bar and I similarly avoided a Kigali restaurant that offered sushi to patrons that were able to give “twenty-four hours notice” of their intention to consume raw fish. I should have known something was up on Bloor when the white tuna I ordered resembled the colours of the pink and brown tones in my wardrobe. Recovering in Collingwood from the welcome back bad fish the next evening, I found myself amazed yet again at the scale of life here. One of my former students recently referred to this as our “big Canadian lifestyle.” I was slightly overwhelmed by the ordinary.

Things were basically non-stop culture shock this past week as I set up my office at the University and my living space in Dundas. While finishing up the former task I stopped into the Institute office at McMaster to hand in an envelope containing receipts from my research-related expenses that had been sealed and stowed in my luggage since April. Inside that envelope Sara Mayo, the Institute’s Administrative Coordinator, found my glossy and unused paper-based SAA ticket. Someday soon, perhaps I will be able to make use of the absent minded professor excuse….

I pushed on to Ottawa for a few meetings at The North-South Institute and caught up with a few friends. My misadventures with transportation systems continued Thursday as I headed back to Toronto on a 6pm train that made it only as far as Belleville before having to reverse back to Kingston as the tracks were blocked. Twelve hours later the bus I was traveling on came to a stop at Union Station. Most people I conversed with that night told me that the strategy of blocking railways and roads to raise awareness about the plight of Canada’s aboriginal peoples – the reason for our lengthy delay – was misguided. One of my seatmates asserted that Canada’s First Nations people do not experience “real poverty like Africans do.” It was a tough a night. Although it was a long first week back in Canada, I am still smiling.

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The North-South Institute has posted a number of these writings on their site: http://northsouthinstitute.wordpress.com/tag/africa/

Merci, Merci, Merci!

2007-06-23T04:44:00.001-07:00

Many, many thanks to the future President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Baraka Shelukindo, and to Reuben Mwaikinda, Namwaka Omari-Mwaikinda, Sakari Saaritsa, Tchaka Ndlovu, Liam Kavanagh, George Kabelwa, Oswald Mashindano, Pendo Kundya, John, Sarah Hunt, Tamara Plush, Brian Cooksey, Robyn Agoston, Mireille Saurette, Andrew Deak, Andre Reinach, Mwatima Juma, Niranjan Pattni, Hugo Gisler, Donald Max, Joe Kabissa, Ann Yoachim, Sam Wangwe, Gerry Helleiner, Roy Culpeper, Bill Morton, Lois Ross, Darlene Sanchez, Ann Weston, Sunday Khan, Hugo Cameron, Marc Froese, William D. Coleman, Daniel Drache, Eric HAZARD, Sally BADEN, Keba FATY, Mouscouta FATY, Florent ARRAGAIN, Sabrina LEVENEZ, Alexis ANOUAN, Barry ALIMOU, Abdoulaye DIA, Moussa SABALY, Amdiatou DIALLO, Boubacar KAMISSOKO, Tina GASSAMA, Jeff Ballinger, Matias Margulis, Jean Michel Montsion, Murray Wilson, Bob Huish, John Howison, James Hetmanek, Kat Peterson, Gordon King, John & Ann Sneyd and all of the other wonderful people that helped me to find my way over the past six months. This blog will live on from Canada....

The Two Solitudes

2007-06-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

The guidelines for a Ph.D. in political ‘science’ at McMaster University stipulate that the dissertation should be 60 0000 words in length. With this fact looming ever larger I have had to make the choice to leave what a friend refers to as my “smiley expat universe” for the time being. I am heading back to the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition to take stock of the information I have collected over the past six months, throw myself into the literature and get down to drafting. With only a few more interviews to complete before hopping on a flight to what could be just a little bit of a culture shock, I have been thinking quite a bit about the costs and benefits of this choice.

Here in Dakar I have been living my life in a new language. In a sense this experiment has been liberating. Though limited by my tiny vocabulary, I have been able to articulate my real feelings about issues and let my true personality shine through without inhibition. The freedom of this new world is slightly addictive. Growing up in officially bilingual Canada I had basically zero interest in learning French. Through immersing myself in Senegal’s people and its baguettes, street art, poetry and sunshine, I have put an end to my insularity. This of course has partly been of necessity: the legacy of France’s colonial era policy of assimilation is overwhelming. For example, I was actually quite perturbed yesterday when I went to buy a bottle of water (itself a political act) and the vendor did not speak French! However, the generosity of my hosts and the insights of my colleagues at ENDA Diapol have been equally powerful motivators as I have attempted to drag myself out of my Anglophone cave. French-language CBC programming, here I come….

In general, the Senegalese are truly beautiful and exude happiness despite the sad reality that they continue to be what some refer to as the country’s “principal export.” Even so, during my runs from Ouakam down to the coast my interactions with them have not always been positive. During my first weeks here I remained preoccupied with work or lost in other thoughts when I hit the road, and as a consequence, dodging sheep dung, horse-drawn carriages and big Mercedes was a serious challenge. Public buses and private vehicles ceaselessly seemed to veer in my direction and I found myself constantly having to move further off to the side of the roads and into the deep sand of the shoulders. Admittedly, this was mostly my fault. Being part of a toubab minority that constitutes less than 1% of the population, my inattentive presence in running gear on the roads was distracting and novel. These days when I run I endeavor to be aware of my surroundings and typically find that I have a big smile plastered on my face. As a result, my experiences en route are increasingly enjoyable. Making eye contact and flashing a genuine smile seems to disarm people that have a lot of hospitality in their hearts.

On the surface then, it appears that my decision to leave this place will cost me a fantastic lifestyle. In one week my daily post-run doses of sunshine while stretching (and dancing) under the neighbourhood baobab tree will come to an end. I will also have to forgo a search for the two ultimate expat comforts: the perfect motorcycle and the ideal open-air rooftop apartment. The opportunity costs of staying to pursue these dreams are too high at this point. This is the case not simply because going home means that I will not wreck any more pairs of underwear through my vain efforts to wash my clothes by hand, or that I will once again have access to organic veggies and a hardcopy my beloved Financial Times. Staying now would necessarily entail falling apart from the very people and the place that gave me the means to pursue this research adventure in the first place. It is absolutely essential that I return to give back to the community that provided me with the keys to pursue work that – as these pages attest – has honestly enabled a voyage of self-discovery. Moreover, being present at McMaster now will not only ensure that I reap gains from being proximate to top minds in the fields of globalization studies and political economy, but also give me an incentive to perform efficiently: the vision of a returning to sub-Saharan Africa and making a difference.

A Little Rostock in Dakar

2007-06-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

One of my friends currently in Rostock, Germany to protest the Group of 8 (G8) meeting describes the police presence there as “the biggest he has ever seen.” While he was on the streets pushing for a new type of global governance and facing the water canons on Saturday, I was in a packed seaside bar watching Senegal’s national soccer team take on Tanzania’s ‘Taifa Stars’ live from Mwanza. The final score was a 1-1 draw, a fitting end to a contest between two most hospitable countries. In the immediate aftermath the din resulting from animated debates over the factors that led the speedy Tanzanians to hold the mighty Lions to just one goal more than drowned out a newsflash that twelve people had died in a stampede following another big match in Northern Zambia.

Escaping to the beach I watched some kids bathe a group of sheep and listened to one person after another as they tried to convince me to buy the beads, paintings or cashews they had on offer. I wondered if any of the young people I saw enjoying their Saturday knew that some of their European contemporaries were at that moment putting their bodies on the line in Germany for the future of peoples and the planet. Later that night I attended an open air, all night party where the fantastic DJ skills and alter ego of a renowned West African cotton expert were on display. As I experienced one of my first truly multicultural moments in Sub-Saharan Africa this year the events at Rostock seemed to be more than a world away. So too did the discussions I witnessed at Wilton Park two weeks ago about the ways and means to build a more equitable global order. Even so, as night turned into day my desire to de-stress remained unfulfilled. After a week of running my “paper writing machine” at full tilt in order to produce a record of the Wilton Park discussion it proved difficult to leave the shop behind. The great tunes and the cool ocean breeze had not put a stop to my worries about the lack of resonance global issues seemed to be having locally.

Fishing off Dakar’s rugged coast with two French expat researchers yesterday these doubts faded. Through a combination of clumsiness and inattention, my line consistently entangled my new friends’ lines, making it more difficult for them to land the barracudas and other large fish they were hooking again and again. The negative ‘externality’ the boat experienced as a direct result of my poor fishing skills and daydreams drew my attention to a political parallel. It seemed to me that the articulation of extreme views on the global democracy and justice movement might have a similar effect. For example, the energetic work of thinkers and activists that has helped the movement to regain the momentum it lost after the September 11th terrorist attacks might be tripped up by rants that focus exclusively on the barriers to achieving change. Similarly, voices that encourage a suspension of disbelief in the movement’s beneficence or strength might ensnare it in an excessive utopianism. At the weekend, my thoughts were firmly at the former end of the spectrum. They were imbalanced and lacking what one prominent US-based self-help guru terms the “power of positive thinking.” In the field of International Relations, students are taught to consider ‘Realism’ and ‘Idealism’ as two separate and competing schools of thought. Beyond this limited and somewhat archaic academic debate, it seems to me that the drive for global equality and intergenerational equity can and should embrace both concepts. Far from being a contradiction, equilibrium between the two – a ‘realistic idealism’ – that foregrounds problems, prospects and diverse policy alternatives appears to me to be exceptionally rational.

If it is not already apparent, the need for balance has become the principal theme and preoccupation of my little adventure…and I am really enjoying every minute of it.

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Pictured: Andrew Deak, André Reinach and the spirit of Dr. Tadzio Mueller

London Calling

2007-05-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

What reforms need to be made to the global political and economic order to promote global equality and intergenerational equity? Do intellectuals and policymakers from the ‘South’ or ‘Third World’ advance perspectives on the changes necessary to advance these principles that are fundamentally different or even at odds with the views that empowered development elites from the rich countries articulate? If so, what are the specific points of divergence and the barriers to the advancement of ‘Southern’ perspectives? How can Southerners realize their visions for change?

This weekend, The North-South Institute is holding a conference at Wilton Park, GB that aims to address these questions in great detail. The participation of several dozen high level people in the development business ensures that this will be an intellectually stimulating and enriching event. I am writing a report on the proceedings and look forward to sharing my more informal thoughts here. En route to another wonderful and challenging learning experience....

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Pictured (l to r): Wilton Park's Roger Williamson, Professor Samuel Wangwe, Richard Manning, Chair of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Development Assistance Committee, and Dr. Alejandro Bendaña. The Southern Perspectives Wilton Park Conference Report is now available on The North-South Institute website.

Networking Cotton

2007-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

I have lost count of just how many times during my grad school years someone has admonished me to remember the old colloquialism that it is “not what you know, but who you know.” While I was at York and early on at McMaster, each time I heard this phrase expressed I would get a little hot under the collar. It seemed to me to be a cliché that was essentially anti-intellectual. In my slightly anger-laced political rejoinders I typically asserted that knowledge production should have priority over networking. However, as time went on my responses mellowed somewhat and I often found myself grudgingly agreeing with the sentiment. My slow acceptance probably had quite a bit to do with the fact that despite my idealism and my doubts I was transforming myself into a major networker. I had learned that competence in contact building was necessary for self-preservation and self-advancement even in an academic context where, as the story goes, knowledge is supposed to be pursued as an end in itself. The development of my thinking on the latter subject also influenced my perspective on networking. I came to believe that as far as the social sciences go, the idea that research can somehow be ‘value-free’ or disinterested is more often than not a myth. As the relationships or institutions that social scientists did not question in their writing became more apparent to me I took on board a lesson that many professors had imparted over the years: if the status quo is problematic, push to change it. This notion became my political rationalization for networking. If principled young thinkers did not engage in such efforts I came to believe that another old chestnut – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – would certainly apply within the ivory tower and beyond. That being said, I was not prepared for just how much value networking could also add to my fieldwork. The raw material inputs I am collecting here in Sénégal will help me to construct an academic finished product, and it is only through a truly golden cotton network that I have been able to access these resources.

On my second full day in Dakar I met with Eric HAZARD and Sally BADEN, two well-known Oxfam UK experts on the West African cotton industry and the world cotton trade. After passing along a bag of Rwanda’s finest coffee to Eric as a token of my appreciation for the many letters of recommendation he had written over the past year for my various scholarship applications and for McMaster University Ethics Board approval, he made a few brief phone calls on my behalf to industry insiders. Eric subsequently turned to me and in English that is much better than my French explained that there was a truck heading to the hub of the cotton zone on Saturday morning that I could catch a ride with. Happy to have a stroke of luck so quickly I headed back to my new office at ENDA Tiers Monde with Barry ALIMOU, Eric’s old research partner and another cotton expert. After a lonely evening with my language learning software I arrived refreshed Friday morning at the office to find Alimou waiting for me outside. He informed me that Amdiatou DIALLO, the Directeur exécutif of the Fédération Nationale des Producteurs de Coton (FNPC), and Moussa SABALY, the FNPC Président, were departing for Tambacounda in one and a half hours and that I had a seat in their truck. Alimou flagged a taxi and we raced through the morning traffic to collect my things and find a bank machine. Three out of service ATMs later we found one that was operating and proceeded to enter a heavy traffic jam en route to the rendezvous at the offices of SODEFITEX, the cotton company. As we neared the meeting point screams of agony pierced through the murmur of running engines and the occasional horn blasts. As we approached I surveyed the scene and ascertained that moments before a young boy on a motorized bicycle had apparently been run over by a large transport truck. The tire marks were clearly embedded in his shattered lower left leg. It was a gruesome sight and fortunately for the boy quite a few people had already made haste to offer assistance. Sadly, such efforts cannot be counted on in other places I have visited this year. When we finally reached SODEFITEX I was still a little shaken. To escape a bit I pulled out my camera to take a few pictures of the street scenes around the place when a guard appeared from nowhere and informed me that I should not be taking photos of private property. Not being exactly in the best of spirits I demanded to know the reason. He offered none and I was left wondering if he had taken action just because I was white and had a camera. The issue of my whiteness was at the forefront of my mind as perhaps a dozen young boys had wandered by during the previous minutes making the inevitable demands: give me your bottle or give me your money, white man!

After meeting Moussa and Amdiatou we proceeded inland. The temperature gradually became more oppressive as we left the Atlantic behind and traversed a baobab-filled landscape. During our 3pm lunch stop I learned that our destination was not Tambacounda and that we were bound for the town of Vélingara instead. To save time we were to pass through the salt mining area around the Saloum River riparian zone and then cross into The Gambia. At the border immigration stamped my passport for 72 hours and as I walked back to the truck the first thing I noticed was that the kids were asking me for things in English instead of in French. As we traveled on into The Gambian countryside I learned that the shortcut plan is always a gamble. Each village on the highway has its own police check point. We passed through four such roadblocks unscathed but had a problem on the fifth go as the local cop demanded to be paid what he termed a “customs fee.” His issue was with the validity of the FNPC paperwork and not with my passport. Even so, since I was the best English speaker available I took it upon myself to resolve the situation. I looked him in the eye and asked if I could see his customs identification. In hindsight it seems like a slightly testosterone-jacked question to have asked a guy with a big gun. However, I was wearing a t-shirt that read “Kiss me, I’m Canadian,” and figured at the time that only the fashion police would take it upon themselves to shoot someone wearing a t-shirt like that. After a few moments he relented by informing us that if he ever saw us again he would arrest us on the spot.

We zoomed along and arrived at the first of two ferries that would take us across The Gambia River. The second was notable as it was powered by hand. All the men lined up along the Eastern side of the ferry and pulled a cable moored to both sides of the crossing. I tried to snap a picture of the President pulling in unison with everyone else but he ducked out just in time and I had to settle for a picture of him with Amdiatou in profile. On the ferries people also continued to ask me for things and I found myself recalling passages on the topic that really frustrated me in a book named “The Masked Rider” by a notable Canadian rock star and drummer about a bicycle trip he took through the region. He equated the phenomenon of kids asking for things with a “socialist” mentality in West Africa. While this particular author’s well known libertarian agenda was a problem for me, I also was not happy with the way he seemed to nonchalantly describe his dismissive treatment of the kids. Now I found myself in The Gambia behaving in a similar fashion and my annoyance with these occurrences somewhat overwhelming. Luckily, my benefactors woke me up with a random act of kindness. They invited three people without a ride to hop into the back of the truck and we rode for the border as twilight descended.

In Vélingara the following day I found myself perched atop a bale of cotton lint in the SODEFITEX yard reading my French dictionary while the FNPC leadership met with Bachir DIOP, the Directeur Général of SODEFITEX, and his team. It was a marathon meeting. While I waited I tried out my French with a few of the workers and had some success. Driving to Tambacounda with Bashir and Amdiatou after the gathering adjourned I witnessed first-hand the convivial relationship between the producers’ organization and the sole buyer of cotton here. The contrasts with Tanzania were stark save for one commonality: the excellent hospitality. Networks rule!

Inaction Reflection

2007-05-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sitting in relative solitude at the heart of Senegal’s cotton growing zone after a whirlwind week of travel, the problems of conducting academic work in Sub-Saharan Africa remain at the forefront of my mind. It seems to me that the payoff from university-based research, reading, reflection, writing and re-writing for people and the planet is certainly only ever realized in the long run, if it is at all. I think that intellectuals engaged in such work here must have a zealous faith in the future value of their output. I believe strongly in my project, but also worry sometimes that my forward orientation can be encompassing to the extent that it desensitizes me to my surroundings. For example, everyday on the ‘cotton trail’ (as an old friend from Queen’s likes to call it) I pass amongst some of the poorest and most exploited people on Earth without engaging substantively in efforts to assist their conditions of life. It is not like I put on a pair of Bono’s rose-coloured glasses each morning as I venture out, but I do find myself gazing at the problems of the people I am not researching much like a tourist. The immediacy of poverty and despoliation in this place is hard to square with a multiyear project to inform policy or the next generation of thinkers. Even though I find it hard to rationalize inaction in the present, I remain committed to the ideal of academic inquiry and the objectives of my dissertation. That being said, I sometimes have skeptical moments about those things too. Occasionally I recall the fact that the pace of poverty eradication and economic redistribution measures is glacial even though libraries around the globe are stuffed full of studies on the factors that impoverish this region and its relationships with the rich countries. Keynes famously noted that in the long run we are all dead, and a lot of insights on those dusty shelves have gone unutilized while many African bodies have piled up over the years. Nonetheless, I see light in his quote. I read it as a call to action or an incentive to get busy. Keynes himself bridged the divide between action and reflection. Like him, I believe that there must be a space for both, and though I regret that I have lacked the former during my current research phase, I know that abstaining from action now serves a higher purpose. The results of reflection can inform debates about the formulation, adoption, implementation and evaluation of governance reforms and policy alternatives that aim to advance the principles of global equality and intergenerational equity. I look forward to the time when I will be able to engage as a public intellectual in those spaces with my findings in hand knowing that my inputs can help people.

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As I waited outside Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last Monday for the Kenya Airways bus to take me to my hotel for the night, the first thing I noticed was that immigration had failed to stamp my passport. I had a receipt for my in-transit visa and figured that since I was in the hands of the airline there would be no problem. As our little group piled into the minibus I had some interesting discussions with a Chinese national off to peddle anti-malarials in the DRC, and an Ethiopian IT manager for Shell bound for Mauritius. An aged white Zimbabwean woman interrupted the latter conversation when she shrilly demanded that the driver take us to the Hilton. Much laughter ensued, followed by even more from me when my new Ethiopian friend noted that our destination was located next to one of East Africa’s biggest mattress factories. After arriving, expecting the worst at the register, I took note of a sign in capital letters: THE SKATING RINK CLOSES AT 11PM. At that point not even the 200 noisy French safari goers or ‘overlanders’ in the lobby could dampen my amazement. There I was at a hotel where from the top of the tower it was possible to wear a pair of skates while viewing African wildlife in the distance or the nearby industrial park. The mattress itself was fantastic and my good luck continued at the airport the following morning as I made it through immigration without a hitch. However, as there is no stamp in my passport and I seem to have misplaced my visa receipt – the only official proof I was there – it is possible that the entire experience was a figment of my imagination. All I can say for sure is that access to such luxury remains a dream for 80%+ of the people that call Kenya home.

Seated next to the window on the plane the following morning I bit into a cherished, fresh copy of the FT and tried to focus as the crew of Chinese labourers in the adjacent seats laughed it up. I stole occasional glances at the landscape below and was lucky enough to see Lake Edward and the Congo rainforest stretching into the distance. I took note of the time and a little under an hour later, after flying over an incredibly flat stretch of seemingly pristine forest, I looked again and saw the Congo River itself. The thing that struck me about the scenery around the river was that the forest seemed to have disappeared. Humanity was omnipresent. Subsequently I found myself putting down my French dictionary and thinking about the importance of the Congo’s trees for the planet and the well-known facts that forest is really not that big and is under pressure. My friends here in Africa know that I have been talking a lot about trees recently. Having planted a lot of them in the boreal forest back home – somewhere around 800 000 over the years – they are often in my dreams. Of late I have been considering ways of bringing them into my future work. Just to be clear, I have already rejected one such idea: the notion of going back to Northern Canada and digging up all 800 000. The findings of a recent “study” that The Economist saw fit to highlight can be used to argue that I should do just that to help prevent climate change. Scary stuff….

Later, after winging over the Niger and Volta watersheds and stopping briefly at Bamako to load up on carbon, copious quantities of beef were served with a pasta dish. As I ate it occurred to me that the Rift Valley Fever scare was much reduced. The story of the bovine and human outbreaks of the fever had been consistently in the news since my arrival in East Africa in January, and the meal drew my attention to the passing of time. At the airport, however, I realized that I apparently had not been here long enough to remember to bring essential disease-related things with me when I traveled, such as my international vaccination certificate. It was safely stowed in Kigali and I was next in line to explain my business to the authorities. Previously, possession of the little booklet had saved me from getting jabbed by a questionable needle filled with Yellow Fever vaccine when I re-entered Kenya from Uganda in 2004. Luckily immigration waved me through and in doing so gave me a great International Labour Day present. Keba Faty, the logistics coordinator for ENDA Tiers Monde and head of the household where I would be staying greeted me outside the airport. We embarked for his place near the market in the suburb of Ouakam and as I breathed in the fresh Atlantic air I soaked up West African sights for the first time. Bakeries and images of marabouts – leaders of Islamic brotherhoods – were everywhere and a new chapter in my research adventure had commenced.

Inspirations

2007-04-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

David Suzuki is my hero. My friend Robyn Agoston has a pet name for him: "the Suzuk." While I was wandering around Kigali on Friday in the Suzuk t-shirt pictured above the man himself was giving Canada's Conservatives hell over their Orwellian plan to continue changing the climate. What an inspiration! The first time I wore the t-shirt on the streets of Toronto I walked past two Greenpeace activists without stopping to chat. Moments later a sparrow flew over me and deposited a serious amount of excrement on my shoulder. Some might say that it was karma. Perhaps John Baird should keep his eyes pointed skyward over the coming weeks....

At the inter-personal level, the woman pictured to my left is another inspiration and a true friend. Tomorrow, with a mind freshly pumped full of French I depart for Dakar and another phase in my research adventure. Look for substantative blogs to start again after my arrival in Senegal.

The Light of Grey

2007-04-23T02:54:00.000-07:00

I have had a great time this past week in Kigali. I spent most of my days analyzing my interviews and working on my French. One reason that I am now in better spirits is that the mood around the city seems to have shifted. I arrived here at an especially dark time: the start of the annual genocide Commemoration Week. Over the subsequent days I heard several Rwandans express their hope that the horrific events of thirteen years ago be remembered with an eye towards the future. However, as an outsider, it seemed to me that these were lonely calls. For example, drawing upon observations I made during my first visit in February, I noted subtle changes to the street scenes that indicated to me that during that many Rwandans remain essentially preoccupied with the past during mid-April. Shared taxis whose patrons typically converse loudly so that they can be heard over the high volume East African beats that the drivers favour, were silent. Rather than seeing many groups of conversing men on the street corners in the city centre - a common sight in this part of the world - I noticed people going about their business quietly and individually with ultra-serious looks upon their faces. The organized remembrance events were the only exceptions to this conspicuous muting of public space. After attending several such powerful gatherings, including an evening at the genocide film festival and an all-day function for a community of households headed by genocide orphans, the grief became overwhelming for me too. I very nearly lost it as I sat through a church service last Sunday at a mission that houses aged genocide survivors. Mass was interrupted at consistent intervals by the wails of a woman who in 1994 had been raped repeatedly by the men she had watched murder her family. Later, after feeding a few babies at the mission's over-capacity orphanage, I tried to escape into a copy of The Economist but found myself unable to focus on the current things that were being done to the world by empowered elites. I was struck by the importance of collective memory and the extent to which it bears upon Rwandan society. I had read about this phenomenon many times before, seen it deployed and manipulated by politicians to advance their agendas and even felt touched by it once per year on 11 November. Even so, I had a newfound respect for its power. History certainly imbues the present-day relationships that keep most Rwandans in all-too visible grinding poverty. Yet each of these particular histories - the kinds of stories my own work focuses on - are encompassed by the emotions, memories and narratives associated with an event that continues to define this place.

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As my parents pointed out to me in an email, the questions I posed last week were too black and white. As you now know it was also a particularly hard week. My thinking on the matters I raised is under construction. For now, suffice it to say that I do believe that principled career-advancement is possible in the field of global 'development'. However, I'm not yet sure how common it is....

People or Paper?

2007-04-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

Here in Kigali I am finding myself questioning whether or not I am as principled a person in the flesh as I appear to be on paper. In my writing, as some of the material in these pages attests, I can make arguments for particular policy or governance changes that I believe will lead to a more equitable and sustainable world order. Researching and writing about the world in an effort to make it a better place is something that many consultants, researchers and activists do to earn a living. Someday soon I hope to count myself amongst their number. If I can establish a reputation for producing informed and honest scholarship and policy advice then I might be well on my way to a jet-setting career as a recognized development professional. As I enjoy the company of a truly selfless crowd of community development workers I wonder about this self-advancement drive of mine. Is it possible that at some point my careerist ambitions might interfere with or even trump the principles I hope to advance through my work? How can a drive to be considered 'successful' in academic and policy circles be squared with a quest to promote global justice? This past weekend my new friends taught me quite a few lessons that could help me to answer the latter question. I hope to impart these lessons, and some partial and contingent answers, later this week.

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The above picture was taken close to the cotton dependent village of Mwamanongou, Meatu District, Shinyanga, Tanzania

4 April 2007

2007-04-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

Early in the morning somewhere West of Dar’s Millennium Tower I found myself having to call ESRF’s Dr. Mashindano for the second time in less than fifteen minutes. After three months in Tanzania I had finally secured an interview with the most in-demand economic thinker in the country, Professor Wangwe. I had no idea where his office was located and my anti-malarial meds had induced a pounding headache. Needless to say I was quite frazzled. I looked up from the phone and watched a Land Cruiser glide by. To my surprise, I saw the man whose portrait adorns the lobby at ESRF in the passenger seat. “Follow that truck,” I very nearly shouted at my new and reasonably priced driver while I contemplated the fact that this was only one stroke of luck amongst many over the past weeks. The meeting that ensued with Professor Wangwe – my sixtieth ‘elite’ interviewee in Tanzania – was truly brilliant, and I felt blessed once again to be in such a privileged position. After saying our farewells and expressing our excitement about the North-South Institute conference we will both attend at Wilton Park next month, I headed to the city centre for my next big catch. Or so I thought.

If I were to generalize about my interviewees, I would say that they have been consistently informed, giving of their time and happy to assist a young mzungu that wants to explain problematic realities in a way that helps people. Save for one, that is. Suffice it to say that during my second interview of the day my project came under the microscope. I became the interviewee. As I emerged into the light of the street I thought about the visceral and negative take on the orientation of my project that I had just been subjected to. It was a first, and a cue for me to think more concretely about the limitations of my work. Even adversity, it seemed, could teach me things.

To clear my head I borrowed a page out of a book that I had recently finished – “The Economist’s Tale” – and made an impromptu drop-in at Pamba (Cotton) House on Pamba Road to see if I could meet briefly with Dr. Kabissa, the Director of the Cotton Board. He received me for a quick visit with a smile and complimented me on my work. As I was planning to write a short preliminary report on my findings, I asked him if there were measures that I could take that would enable me to write it in a way would that would be acceptable to most Tanzanians. Like Professor Wangwe, he advised me to stick with the facts and to avoid any pretensions to having all of the answers. Wangwe had noted that there are many things that people like me do not know about Tanzania, and many things about Tanzania that many Tanzanians do not know too, and that that message had to be front-and-centre. He impressed upon me that I must make it crystal clear to my readers that I am writing a contingent story about complex relationships and that what I have to say will add new empirical content to many diverse debates. After echoing these comments, Dr. Kabissa opined that he looked forward more to the finished dissertation than to a little report. I told him that his suggestion would be music to my supervisor’s ears.

I proceeded up the road to track down a copy of the 2004 Environment Act. After inquiring at the office that had provided me with a copy of the 2005 Biosafety Protocol, the staff suggested that I go around the corner to the “duka da vitabu wa taifa” (the National Bookshop). A comedy of errors ensued. “Around the corner” I made at least eight inquiries of different passerby regarding the exact location of the shop. Under the influence of the latest directions I’d been given in Swahili, I potentially walked past it four times as I crossed and re-crossed a traffic circle with no fewer than six roads jutting off of it. Curly blonde guys in aviators can be comic relief for the locals, and I was happy to oblige. Persistence paid off though, and I actually procured a whack of legislation, including the Employment Act and others that will be useful as I probe the question of potential child labour that came up more than once in Geita District.

Leaving the bookstore, to my surprise, a truck with the logo of the International Fund for Agricultural Development painted on its side was parked directly in front of me. I approached and asked if the Country Officer, Dr. Juma, was around and if it would be possible to say farewell to her. She had previously provided me with a wealth of information on the organics movement. I interviewed at least eight people as a direct result of the things I learnt during our first meeting, and it was great to thank her in person.

Later, after editing the day’s interviews from home I felt the need to do a workout. I set out on foot for the Gymkhanna Club. The Ocean Road evening traffic jam was in full effect and as I approached the Aga Khan Hospital the SUVs were at a standstill. At the corner, as they do every day, local street peddlers were hawking ice cream, shirts, bananas and pineapples. I saw a woman finish paying for some ice cream and then watched in seeming slow motion as she unwrapped the product and then flicked the wrapper out the window of her Range Rover and into the street. I stopped and without thinking twice picked up the wrapper and tossed it back inside the Range Rover’s open window and onto her lap. A few people that had witnessed my response started to yell at me in Swahili, presumably because the government employs labourers to clean up the road. Perhaps I was endangering those jobs! However, I paid no attention to the fuss and continued on my journey. It was a direct action that had sprung from somewhere in my subconscious mind and I was at peace. I think my Grandfather would have been proud.

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My time in Tanzania has come to an end for now. I have many people to thank for making my adventure thus far an incredible success. As I sit down in Kigali next week to piece together my thoughts on the past months I will be thinking of the many wonderful people that have helped me along the way. So, to my new friends: farewell and I’ll see you in the future.

Pamba Time: Part II

2007-03-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

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.

Pamba Time

2007-03-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

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!

The Fourth 'C'

2007-03-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Acknowledgements

2007-03-10T02:34:00.000-08:00

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!

Finding the Balance

2007-02-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Every evening at around 6:45pm at least five thousand bats come out to feast above Ocean Road. Their rhythmic aerial dance coincides with the time when the people that live in number 17 and the surrounding buildings are gathering and preparing food. It is a wonderful sight to see. By day, while the colony rests in the treetops and the people retreat indoors, the crows hold court under the blistering sun. Much like the ravens that soar above treeplanters in Canada’s clear cuts, the crows here sometimes spread their wings and fly directly over those that dare to venture out into the heat. On several occasions they have used this technique to alert me to their presence. This perpetual dance I’ve been witnessing – crows by day, bats by night – exudes balance. I’ve heard some people argue that similar instances of symmetry are hard to find in the day-to-day life of Dar es Salaam. I’m not convinced that they are entirely correct. In the midst of the lopsided realities of a city where grinding poverty exists alongside of great wealth, it seems to me that ever so slightly, balance is intruding at the margins. It’s not the norm, but its embryonic existence gives me hope.

Take Zungwe for example. He’s one of the gang of taxi drivers I’ve hassled consistently over the past month when I have opted for transportation that is slightly less than eco-friendly. Along with Pazi, Kanuti and Idi, Zungwe has listened to me complain at great length about the ‘outrageous’ four thousand shilling cab fare from the taxi stand to the offices of the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF). He and I got off to an exceptionally bad start. Through no fault of his own, the first time I hired him, Zungwe failed to show up on time at the ESRF to take me to an interview. I had instructed him to arrive at 2pm. He rolled into the ESRF about six hours later. Stupidly, I had forgotten that Dar isn’t simply in a different time zone than Toronto: people here also have their own unique way of telling the time! On the Swahili coast, 7am is known as ‘saa moja’ or the first hour. When I told Zungwe to pick me up at 2pm, and made the mistake of referring to it as ‘saa mbili’ (the second hour), he assumed that I wanted to be collected from the office at 8pm, the second hour of the evening. Not realizing my error, I summarily dumped Zungwe as a driver and opted to hire Idi the next day. Zungwe wasn’t much in my thoughts until several weeks later in the small hours of the night before my flight to Kigali. It was proving hard to find a driver to the airport so as a last resort I asked Baraka to talk to the ‘unreliable’ taxi guy whose number was stored in my phone. He actually showed up. On the way to Nyerere airport as we listened to Tanzanian covers of Congolese music I noted the collection of Bob Marley stickers that adorned his car. We were once again on good terms.

Last week Zungwe’s ride – Dar’s best homage to Mr. Marley – went into the shop. After it was assessed, Zungwe was told that his car would be out of commission for at least twenty-five business days. When Idi explained the situation to me the first thought that popped into my head was about something I’ve heard the locals refer to as ‘African Time’. I wondered what twenty-five official working days would mean if this nebulous and pervasive force were to come into play. If the repairs stretched much longer than a month, a la African Time, would Zungwe’s business survive? What about his family and their needs? Would his landlord understand?

As I headed over to the taxi stand to catch a ride to the peninsula and a Mardi Gras party last Friday night I bumped into Zungwe. Instead of his typical jeans and baseball cap he was dressed in the traditional Islamic style and wearing a kofia. He hopped into Idi’s cab with me. I asked him about the crisis and he told me that he was spending his days at the Mosque. He explained that he used to listen to prayers on his car radio in isolation, and that he was finding joy in being part of his community once again despite the circumstances. I quietly passed five thousand shillings to him. It was another moment straight out of the film version of the ‘Constant Gardener’. There I was in a sea of poverty confronted with one person that I could help. I didn’t think twice about my decision. Subsequently I learned that I’m not the only one that has assisted Zungwe during his time of need. It seems that an informal support network has sprung up. Sakari Saaritsa, a new friend of mine, is pursuing PhD studies on similar networks that existed in Finland before the rise of the welfare state. I look forward to reading his work on the topic in light of Zungwe’s precarious situation.

In writing about this truly positive response to an unfortunate turn of events in no way am I trying to obscure the factors that impoverish Tanzania’s urban poor. The point is that some in the community, notwithstanding multiple government and market failures, are working individually and collectively on their own time to prevent hardship. This is an inspirational story. If powerful people in this city take the need to achieve balanced and fair outcomes into their hearts as they go about their work – if they learn from the bats and the crows and the networks – things might change. As it stands, the economically rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and balance seems to be a peripheral political issue. I think I’ll start a bat-watching club.

2007-02-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

Employment Generation or Exploitation?

2007-02-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

He looked up from his plate of spring rolls and told me to think like the Keynesian welfare state. It probably wasn’t the first time that Daniel Drache, the Canadian political economist, had given this little piece of advice to a student, or in my case, a former student. But the timing of his challenge to me could not have been better. Seated across the table on a bewilderingly hot January afternoon, I was set to fly out for Tanzania in a couple of days. After finishing another delicious mouthful of green curry I asked for some clarification. Drache explained that it was possible for me to make choices about my consumption habits in Dar es Salaam that would generate local employment. In effect, he urged me to embrace the market. Instead of washing and ironing my own clothes or preparing my own meals, he encouraged me to engage people to do these things. Ideally, in his view, by expanding the range of services that I purchased on a daily basis I would induce a supply response that would create jobs. I savoured the Thai food and his wisdom – both were free for me – and imagined what life was like for people that stood to benefit from the application of Drache’s lesson. The prospect of becoming a micro-level personification of post-war economic policymaking was enticing.

While I entertained do-gooder thoughts that afternoon, one of the houseboys at 17 Ocean Road was in bed recuperating. Days before, disaster had struck while he was walking home alone after ringing in 2007 with some friends. Two men rushed up to him – one brandishing a knife – and proceeded to beat him to the ground. More men joined the assault and in a few seconds the knife had done its work. Blood flowed from a deep gash above the houseboy’s right temple. Upon seeing the mess one of the attackers reached down and grabbed the victim’s cell phone and wallet. The gang subsequently melted into the night and the young wounded man raced back to number 17. When he reached the gate one of the guards took note and bolted up the stairs to inform Ronald Shelukindo that John, his full time helper, was in need of professional medical attention.

Big Ron’s response to the crisis demonstrated why he is known around Dar as ‘Baraka’ or blessing. After piling John into his Mercedes Baraka sped to the Aga Khan hospital just up the road. Upon arrival John’s head was promptly sewn up and a course of medication prescribed. The total cost of the visit came to 100 000 TZS, well beyond John’s means. This husband and father of two from Arusha did not expect his boss to pay the bill. He considered hospital care to be a personal expense. When they arrived at the cashier’s window, however, Baraka opened his wallet and paid the full amount. He then turned to John and explained that John’s wages were only one element of their employment agreement. In Baraka’s mind, if anything happened to John or to his family it was incumbent upon him, as a responsible employer, to make things right. For nearly thirty years Baraka had lived on or near Ocean Road and not once had he seen or heard of a similar incident. He didn’t think twice about choosing to come to the financial aid of his employee at a random moment of need.

In mid-January I moved my things into Ron’s spare bedroom. He introduced me to John, the man that would now be doing nearly all of the grocery shopping, meal preparation, house cleaning, laundry and insect termination for one worldly Tanzanian and his new hungry and dirty Canadian housemate. Over the following weeks I came to rely more and more on John’s work. Every single day he made me a great breakfast and demonstrated an amazing amount of stamina and skill by cleaning all of my dirty laundry by hand. I contributed little to his efforts. I simply picked up certain essentials from the shops up the road, including phone cards and the occasional beer or three, and helped Ron to pay for some of the food, electricity and Internet costs. Once or twice per week, when I remembered, I would buy John a 500ml bottle of Castle, the famous South African beer. The guy made my life so much easier and he did it with a smile on his face. I thought that spending about $1.50 Canadian once in awhile was the least I could do. For some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I neglected to tell Baraka about my little habit.

Then one morning I woke from a fairly restless and sweaty sleep with my head full of thoughts about the day’s agenda. I made my ritual dash to the fridge to retrieve a water jug and fill my glass. To my surprise and disdain the water was ‘finished’, as they say around here. I was pretty pissed off. Then I discovered that there were also no eggs. I caught myself throwing some shillings at John and telling him to remember to remind us when things ran out. Before thinking about what I was doing, I sent him out the door and to the shops down the street, towards the place where he was attacked. Apparently I’d made the transition from covert do-gooder to asshole in about a week.

Nothing can excuse my behaviour that morning. As I have thought more about my actions it has become apparent to me that there is a very fine line between employment generation and exploitation. It is now my view that those with the means to employ domestic help in this country should do so. But they should also provide working conditions that are fair and decent. Baraka meets this standard. He is a fantastic boss. John is happy to be supporting his family with earnings from all of his work. Without Big Ron or someone else as giving, the chances are slim that he would even have a paying job. If, however, employers behave like I did that morning, or in other more sinister and unforgivable ways, this type of employment generation might be a dead end. As it stands, at 17 Ocean Road there is hope for John. He’s learning English. The phrasebook is open on the kitchen counter and Baraka is doing his bit to get John to converse in my language more often. It feels good to be reciprocating in a small way all of the value that John adds to our lives. I hope that he succeeds.

There are too many people?

2007-02-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Here in Rwanda roughly 900 people inhabit each square kilometre of arable land. The population is also expanding rapidly. According to several government estimates, if growth trends continue, the current number of Rwandans – 8.6 million – will double by the year 2020. Alarmingly, Rwanda’s population is growing at a much faster rate than the anemic rate at which it is expanding food production for the domestic market. As food imports continue to rise to meet mounting demand, the outlook for Rwanda’s impoverished rural majority is bleak. Heightened import dependence could mean greater risks for those that are not engaged in subsistence agriculture, such as non-diversified cash crop farmers and agricultural labourers. For example, rural people that depend increasingly upon imports might not have the means necessary to purchase their own basic food needs if the value of the Rwandan franc were to tank. Similarly, if climate events like the devastating 2006 East African drought occur more frequently, greater reliance on imports from that region could be associated with decreased food security.

Alternatively, a future free from import dependence could be equally grim for the poor. Two standard policy options for pre-empting imports and expanding domestic food production also have the potential to impoverish people: a vast scaling-up of the amount of land under cultivation, and diversification away from export-oriented agriculture. Regarding the former, the ad hoc growth in Rwanda’s arable land to date has denuded its spectacularly rolling landscape. Farmers that cultivate the famous hillsides where forests once stood tall are now often faced with the reality that their soil is eroding and easily exhausted. Consequently, boosting the output of food through extensive growth does not seem sustainable. The alternative to expanding production extensively – the increased use of inputs such as pesticides – would not actually reduce import reliance. It would simply switch imports of food for imports of costly inputs that, in the case of some pesticides, have the potential to undermine the long-term health of direct producers. Diversifying away from Rwanda’s greatest sources of foreign exchange earnings – its tea and coffee exports – also appears to be an unpalatable policy option. While both of these products are nonessential and subject to wild price swings on world markets, it would be extremely difficult for the government to find substitute sources of hard currency inflows. The proposition that Rwanda’s tea and coffee farmers would be better off growing food for domestic consumers is also highly questionable. Absent government coordination and the creation of effective safety nets, adjustment costs could easily throw many of these rural dwellers into the ranks of the extreme poor.

Over two centuries ago Thomas Malthus, the classical political economist, hypothesized that population growth had a tendency to outpace increases in the food supply. While countless reports issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization over the past decades have discredited his theory and drawn attention to problems associated with the global distribution of food, some might still be tempted to view Rwanda’s crisis through a Malthusian lens. Those so influenced could foreseeably make the perverse argument that there are actually too many people in Rwanda. Only 13 short years ago, according to credible and critical accounts, the ‘international community’ was complicit in the deaths of nearly one million Rwandans. Can anyone from this ‘community’ honestly tell Rwanda’s poorest – over 60 per cent of the population – that there are simply too many of them?

As I traveled west from Kigali to Kibuye on the shores of Lake Kivu last Saturday, I started to think that Rwanda’s population ‘problem’ was not just about the inability of its people or government to reduce fertility. It seemed to me that other factors were at play as well, principal among them, the colonial demarcation of Africa that took place in 1885 at the Berlin Conference. Witnessing thousands of people making the hike along crowded roads towards bustling markets I thought for a moment that rural Rwandans could really benefit from an effort to redraw the old territorial lines. I remembered that Rwanda’s giant neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, enjoys a much lower population density. I briefly found myself believing that some sort of resettlement scheme would be an ideal (if somewhat unworkable) ‘solution’ to Rwanda’s looming land crisis. Then I came back to earth. Literally. I imagined the fit that Gordon King, my radical ecologist grandfather, would pull if I told him that the optimal ‘solution’ was to resettle Rwandans in one of the most biologically diverse and fragile ecosystems on the planet. The importance of reconciling pro-poor outcomes with the maintenance of the biosphere came into sharp focus in my mind, but my thinking on the topic remained wooly. I found myself recalling a little piece of advice Neil Gislason gave me before my travels: “use condoms." Neil's counsel, while dissonant with my own thinking that day, seemed a relevant and realistic prescription for Rwanda.

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So, what was I doing in Rwanda? I went to Rwanda to see as much of the country as I could on an extended long weekend. I saw the haunting memorial sites at Kibuye, Nyamata and Ntarama. I had a great tour guide in Mireille Saurette, and enjoyed the company of great hosts at the ‘Never Again International’ country office. Was my trip worth the carbon emissions? Let me know.

To Rove or not to Rove

2007-01-29T00:21:00.002-08:00

During the lead up to the Iraq Invasion my housemate Neil Gislason and I often tuned in to ‘Diplomatic Immunity’, the weekly TV Ontario current affairs programme. One blustery night we were surprised to learn that the show was not focusing on the impending conflict. Instead of witnessing another debate between Eric Margolis and Janice Stein over the relative merits of the military option, we were treated to some deep thoughts on Sub-Saharan Africa’s development problems. Neil and I will never forget that night. Professor Stein opined that one of the principal impediments to equitable development was a culture of ‘Land Rover envy’. We thought about it for weeks. Was it really only the size of one’s rover that counted?

Based upon my informal observations of the twice-daily traffic jam on Ocean Road here in Dar es Salaam, Professor Stein was on to something. Typically 70 to 75% of the idling vehicles that I walk past on my way to work are gas-guzzlers. Often their doors feature the logos of prominent NGOs and development agencies, including several of the former that concentrate on environmental issues, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature. Certainly the local development establishment can convincingly rationalize the composition of its fleet by appealing to the sorry state of Tanzania’s side roads. However, it remains an open question just how many of these SUVs are actually used consistently to do work in rural areas. In short, I’ve caught myself wondering on more than one occasion if this transportation ‘norm’ is really necessary for development workers based in and around Dar. In light of the present climate crisis, the status quo surely does not seem desirable.

As the environment surges past its historic 1989 high to the top of the national priority list in Canada, it makes sense to think about my own project’s environmental balance sheet. On January 5th, days before I left, I recall walking down Yonge Street in Toronto clad in nothing more than my David Suzuki t-shirt. That same day, looking at my research budget, I wondered what it was going to cost me to hire an SUV to complete interviews with cotton farmers in the heart of Tanzania’s Western Cotton Growing Area. At the time I didn’t really grasp the contradiction. I can now see that I was unthinkingly caught up in the old equation: development work = big white truck.

Many of the young expats that I met at a party last Friday night have liberated themselves from such path dependence. They have embraced ‘piki pikis’ (little motorbikes) and car pools. When they do hop into one of the many development dreamboats, it is frequently because they are hitching a ride. I hope to follow their lead. If I bear in mind Toronto guitar superstar Don Duval’s famous dictum I should be able to will my environmental awareness into action. As Donner has admonished again and again: “less talk, more rock!”

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Thanks to all of you that got in touch after the last posting. It was great to know that so many took the time to read my thoughts. The sad thing is that Nairobi's marginalized and dispossessed residents face similar challenges every week. I haven't yet heard from any of the other witnesses about subsequent developments. I’ll keep you posted.

2007-01-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

World Social Wake-up Call

2007-01-22T00:58:00.001-08:00

On Saturday I arrived in Nairobi to attend the World Social Forum for three days. I was incredibly excited to meet new people and discuss all things political and economic. After landing at Kenyatta airport my taxi driver told me that there had been many changes in the city over the past two years, including a visibly scaled-up police presence. He noted that the people he knew generally felt safer going about their daily lives. I took him at his word, and getting caught up in his optimism, thought nothing more of Kenya’s development problems.

As we neared my destination on Milimani Road – Nairobi Backbackers – I took in the sights along a beautiful road named after the famous African-American political scientist and Nobel laureate Ralph Bunche. As I subsequently walked from the Backpackers towards the mall to check out the best development bookstore in East Africa I realized that on my last visit in 2004 I must have been in great shape. This time, not having recently completed months of treeplanting, my legs were on fire!

I returned to the Backpackers in the mid-afternoon for a meeting with two fellow Canadians set up by the global social convenor herself, Robyn Agoston (my old officemate at The North-South Institute). Leaving at least twenty WSF delegates to enjoy an overdone rack of lamb, Andrew Deak, Mireille Saurette and I headed out for some Italian in the city centre. We drank red wine and pontificated about the state of the Forum and the condition of the world. Andrew explained his current documentary project and discussed the WSF’s chronic disorganization, while Mireille talked about her new home in Rwanda and the possibilities of building a more eco-friendly economy. For my part, I wondered aloud about the size of the pile that would result from stacking all the vehicles in the world together in one place. My guesstimate was that such a stack would extend at least from Nairobi to the coast at Mombassa. I argued that the production and dissemination of a pseudo view from space of such a pile belching a giant cloud of emissions could go a long way towards getting people to think twice about taking the car…or in the case of East Africa, the giant SUV.

Afterwards, as the taxi dropped me at Milimani and Bunche I was caught up in the moment. I didn’t think twice about the large crowd of people gathered just down Bunche at the head of an alley running parallel to Milimani. I proceeded up Milimani, passing the Milimani apartments and the autowreckers en route to the Backpackers. When I entered the compound I realized that something was up from the looks of concern I got from the people seated in the restaurant. I headed around the back of the main building to my shelter for the night in one of the permanently pitched tents and ran smack into a crowd of a dozen Forum delegates. They were standing outside of my tent and gazing over the compound’s back fence. I asked several women what was happening. They explained that half an hour before, police (or men dressed as police) drew their guns and marched up the alley behind the Milimani apartments into the slum directly behind the Backpackers. The ‘cops’ simply told the residents to “get out.” According to these witnesses, two giant bulldozers then drove up the alley and into the slum. These machines rolled over all of the homes and shelters that stood in their way.

I paused, listened, and then realized that I was hearing the sound of bulldozers in action. Women and children were screaming. From their cries we could tell that many were choosing to remain inside their homes until the last possible second. I pulled out my digital audio recorder and captured the roaring of the bulldozers, the grating of metal on metal, and the terror-induced screeches.

It was morbid. Here we were, a group of people that John Kenneth Galbraith would definitely consider to be “socially concerned” (if he were still with us, that is) and we were absolutely paralyzed. Someone discussed marching over as a group to put a stop to the carnage. But the impulse to self-preserve took hold. The consensus seemed to be that it was irresponsible to organize a direct intervention in the pitch black against men with guns. Not knowing how to react, people retreated into their own thoughts.

The bulldozers shut down around 2am and then the pillaging began. Men – many of them quite drunk – trickled into the slum in groups. They began recovering corrugated fencing and other things of value. Safely behind the wall, and the property rights it represented, my tent was no more than three metres from the destructive action. I sprawled out on my cot in my clothes, thinking it was best to remain clothed in case the fence were to become a target for the looters, and settled in for a sleepless night. As things got colder I thought of the hundreds of women and children that had been forced out into the Nairobi night with no place to go but the forest along Bunche Road.

When the sun came up on Sunday morning I learned that several delegates had shot video footage of the event in the alley. Word was getting out to the WSF organizers and there were plans to post as much information about the incident as possible on the web through sites such as Indymedia. I joined a fellow delegate and headed to alley to talk to people, take pictures and see what could be done. Upon seeing the place my first impression was that a bomb had gone off. Apparently the community had existed for twenty years. As my pictures attest, it was completely flattened in about four hours. The images are quite disturbing. I will post one or two on the blog later today or tomorrow.

I wrestled with staying at the Forum for the duration, and decided against it. I hopped into a taxi for Kenyatta, and after witnessing my driver pay off an officer on the road to the airport (chai kidogo incident #2), had him drop me off at the WSF airport welcome centre. I explained what had happened behind the Backpackers. After hearing my story one volunteer said that it had probably been the work of thieves. In her view the government was not involved, and the slum dwellers had probably been given a notice of eviction, or were likely thieves themselves. Another volunteer apparently misunderstood my story. She informed the committee that WSF delegates had been attacked by slum dwellers. I corrected her, but this apparently did not stop her from contacting airport security. After changing some money at international arrivals, I walked back past the welcome centre, and this person told me to sit and wait for the head of airport security to arrive. Apparently he wanted to see me to discuss my “serious allegation.” Needless to say I hightailed it to the departures terminal and smiled my way through immigration.

Kenya had an opportunity this week to show the world that changes were afoot. Unfortunately, they failed to meet the challenge. Saturday’s Financial Times Magazine featured an article on Kenyan anti-corruption crusader John Githongo. It detailed how the “kleptocratic” (plundering) ways of the Moi-era have continued unabated during Kibaki’s tenure as President. To this recognition I would add that human rights abuses are ongoing and significant under the new regime. As nearly twenty young WSF delegates will attest, human rights violations occurred on Saturday night. It is quite possible that no one in the government sanctioned the destruction. The fact remains, however, that the authorities did not put a stop to it. I can think of no rational justification for toppling houses with people in them at gunpoint even if an eviction notice has been served and the date to vacate has passed. According to witnesses nobody died on the night of 20 January behind Nairobi Backpackers. It is an open question whether those dwelling at the bulldozer crew’s next target will have similar luck.

The pressing question concerns what will happen to the people that lost their homes. My hope is that those that stayed on at the Forum after witnessing this tragic event are able to act on the desires they articulated Sunday morning to help. I felt that I could best contribute by getting out of the country and writing about the incident. I hope there are other ways that I can be of use to these newly homeless people as time goes on, and will update all of you on what is being done, and the ways you might possibly be able to contribute.

Check out Andrew's blog: http://andrewreflects.blogspot.com

2007-01-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

Ticket to Development

2007-01-15T23:01:00.001-08:00

I jetted out of Pearson International in Toronto one week ago today. The past seven days have been an emotional rollercoaster. At times I've been excited to finally be in Tanzania. I've also found myself feeling apprehensive on more than one occasion. It's an entirely new social scene here and my connections are embryonic at best. I also have a lot of work to do. Above all, I've felt sad to leave behind my best friend Katharine and our little pet, "the man" (see the photo). I hadn't realized just how attached I'd grown to them! As I arrived at the start of the Revolutionary Day long weekend I had a lot of time to think about life with them over the past years.

I busied myself last weekend with several day trips to important historical points of interest. On Friday, to make the memories of my 48 hour "in transit" experience fade, I hired a car to take me to Bagamoyo up the coast. This city used to be the heart of the Omani empire's slaving and ivory trading operations. It also served as the first capital of German East Africa. I toured one of East Africa's first mosques and walked the famous coastline where many of East Africa's dhows (boats) are built. I also started remembering Swahili phrases and hacked away at them while ordering lunch and hanging out in the fruit market.

Somewhere between seeing another lorry load of pineapples making its way towards the city and watching my driver haggle over a bag of mangoes he asked me if I wanted to see his new plot of land. He told me that he had saved up 2 million TZS (+/- $1900 Canadian) to purchase a small hillside piece of property, and will spend a further 5 million TZS to build his retirement home on the site. The Tanzanian government estimates that the monthly average income for urban households is 104 thousand TZS per month. Assuming my driver earns the average, he will have to devote 48 months of earned income to build his dream home, potentially more if he takes out any loans to speed the process. To me this level of investment (four years of household income) seems quite similar to what many Canadian families would put into the construction of their cottage or retirement home.

But the numbers are interesting. They occupied me on Saturday when I had some time to play with them. For example, in 2005, nearly 583 thousand tourists visited Tanzania. If each of these visitors spent the very conservative equivalent of 1.6 million TZS on their flight, the international airlines made nearly as much as Tanzania earned in foreign exchange receipts from its tourists that year: $746 million USD or roughly 956 billion TZS. Assuming my driver's costs were accurate, 956 billion TZS would build 88 300 houses on plots of similar size.

Having time to think, a rather radical idea occurred to me. What if tourists were encouraged to donate the equivalent of their flight costs directly to the government or development agencies operating in the country? The government would be able to make tourism less of an 'enclave' industry and redistribute the earnings from the sector across the economy in a way that would meet their development objectives. Tanzanians that are less well off than my driver and that do not currently benefit directly from the tourist industry would stand to make substantial gains.

The challenge, of course, would be to get prospective tourists to purchase the "ticket to development". Beyond moral suasion there are several possible ways that this approach could be made viable. An incentive package funded from the earnings of the scheme could be developed that would give ticket holders access to great discounts on their accommodation that would be unavailable to "regular" tourists. Global publicity could also make purchasing the ticket into a status symbol in the rich countries. To serve those that purchase the ticket but choose to forgo their trip, the government could create an agency that would produce "virtual" memories with the latest technology that recount the forgone vacation. In David Vogel's terms, there is a new "market for virtue". Perhaps Tanzania can take advantage of this new climate, and concern for Africa in general, with the establishment of a market for development tickets or something similar.

Anyway, these are quite possibly the bleary ramblings of a culture shocked Canadian that misses his good friends...so the above policy advice should be taken with a truckload of salt!

Saturday I traveled to Pugu Hill, home to the secondary school where Mwalimu Julius Nyerere - the father of the nation - taught before he became active in politics. It was a great adventure, especially when I headed further up the road to Kisarawe. The local cop pulled the car over and made my driver demonstrate that all parts were in working order, including the wipers, seatbelts, headlights, blinkers and mirrors. After checking the registration and insurance particulars, he demanded to know why the car lacked a fire extinguisher. Apparently the cop was looking for "chai kidogo" (a little tea). Thinking fast, my driver told him that I wasn't set to pay until I returned to my hotel. The officer subsequently let us go.

Sunday I hit Kunduchi beach North of the city. Despite my best efforts to reapply sunscreen the tropical sun did what it typically does upon first exposure: I now have a sunburned left ankle and some serious streaking on my back. It was great to be back in salt water not far from where I last tasted it to the North and West on Zanzibar in 2004. I also rediscovered dalla dallas that day (shared toyota minivans). Why I went for cabs on days one and two I'm not sure. Riding with twenty people in a minivan made me remember my last trip, and I started to feel more at ease in my new surroundings.

Yesterday (Monday) was a day of bureaucratic non-events. I secured my research clearance and immigration papers, and picked up my plane ticket to Nairobi for the World Social Forum. I head for Nairobi on Saturday.

Today I move into my new place on Ocean Road, up from State House. I am indebted to Namwaka Omari and Reuben Mwaikinda for finding me this space and can't wait to meet my new housemate, Ronald Shelukindo.

That's it for the first post. My USB cable is en route, so there will be pictures starting next week. Keep in touch via email!

adam

2006-09-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

Cranking it up....

2006-09-14T17:42:00.000-07:00

All right! I am giving birth to an informal site for my dissertation research on globalization, cotton and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. This blog will impart my adventures as I try to understand and write about the relationships between cotton production and poverty. I plan to use this space to tell tall tales about my travels in Tanzania and Senegal in 2007. So...stay tuned.