Ayn Rand Never Visited Haiti

I never realized how much government intervention was required to create a “free” market until I got to Haiti and spent three weeks researching the private sector and its impact on poverty alleviation. In the US, we (and myself included) often support less government intervention because it supposedly allows the free market to optimize outcomes and create the least distortions and most efficiencies. Just look at the USSR and its state-planned economy, people often say.

Well, Haiti invites you to look to the other end of the spectrum. Let’s say that there is no government intervention to upkeep roads and ports that help get goods to market, no agricultural extension agents to ensure farmers are efficient enough to at least feed their own people, no good public education or healthcare meaning you end up with an unskilled and unhealthy workforce, no stable or liquid capital markets to get loans to grow a business, and no real rule of law which makes going out on the streets a hazard – let alone trying to keep your property safe or legal.

The moral of the story is that businesses don’t work very well in this environment. Pair this with a bit of discrimination (when Haiti gained Independence, no one recognized them because they were black ex-slaves), a French colonial system (never as efficient at spitting out strong bureaucracies like the Brits), some US embargoes, and some IMF structural adjustment programs to get rid of any protective import tariffs, and you get Haiti. Viola.

Apart from losing faith in the free market system, I found Haiti to be quite enjoyable. The weather was amazing and the mountains around Port-au-Prince were beautiful, but surpassed by the countryside and beaches further afield. This country has astounding natural beauty that no one ever really talks about.

I didn’t find the people to be especially friendly on the streets but then again, I wasn’t really allowed on the streets. My NGO client ensured I was “protected” inside a large, white SUV anywhere beyond 5 feet from my hotel or office. If I were to have slipped away, say to like the landfill or to some of the tent camps, I am pretty sure I would have actually been quite safe. However, as such activities would have caused my security officers minor heart attacks, it’s just a guess.

And when we compare Haiti’s Carnavale to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Barranquilla, Colombia; Cajamarca, Peru; and Venice, Italy… Haiti more than holds its own. The float below, four hours, hearing loss, thousands of people dancing in the streets, passing through a small town with dilapidated French architecture…

Solar Lanterns Solve Marital Disputes

One of the things I love most about travelling is experiencing a culture that has grown up with a totally different set of standards and beliefs. It forces you to realize that so many of the things you hold (often unconsciously) to be true are mostly just a product of where you grew up.

In Ghana, my favorite cultural difference is that the country has never been taught the word “politically correct.” This clearly leads to more fun for all involved. For someone that has grown up in a politically correct culture, say the U.S., we take it for granted that you do not discuss your new co-worker’s body parts in public. Meanwhile, on day two of the job in Ghana I was told that I’m not “fleshy enough and don’t have enough butt” to ever catch a Ghanaian husband. (For the record, I hadn’t asked). While this was crushing, I found that the cards were really stacked against me when I learned that all western women “just smoke and drink a lot and then refuse to cook.” This one was a bit harder to argue with, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the blatant stereotyping.

But the best comments came during my field visits. As a part of my work in Ghana, I was visiting projects that my NGO client had done in conjunction with the private sector. The projects highlight some great examples and opportunities for private sector engagement in poverty alleviation and some very positive unintended consequences:

1. Shea Butter Stops Adultery: A Women’s Cooperative in Northern Ghana began a Shea butter production facility with the initial capital and business training from the NGO. They now sell 3.5 tons of Shea butter a month to a top UK body products company (Lush). During my videotaped interview with the head of the cooperative, I asked her about the benefits of the cooperative. I’m pretty sure the Christian NGO I am working for is going to LOVE reason number two: “It has given us a lot of change in the women. It has helped that the women don’t migrate down south to look for other jobs making them fall sick or go to other men… They can even do their house chores in addition to the Shea butter. They pay their children’s school fees and health insurance… It has come to be a great help to us”

Women in the Shea Women's Cooperative:

2. Solar Lanterns Solve Marital Disputes: Philips and the NGO created a project whereby the NGO identified community sales agents who would sell a new Philips solar lantern to communities without electricity. This gave sales agents an income-generating opportunity and the communities would have access to light which can improve economic opportunities, healthcare, and education. In an interview, one of my clients noted an additional benefit: “When women had to use kerosene lanterns for light while cooking, there was a risk that the lamp would fall into the soup and ruin it, making their husbands mad and causing them to beat their wives. That can’t happen anymore so the solar lanterns have cut down marital trouble.”

3. Everyone Knows Men Can’t Carry Things on Their Heads: Amway was working on a project to sell health, beauty, and kitchen products in rural Ghana using a “microfranchise” model whereby the NGO and Amway identified female sales agents who would carry baskets of products around their communities to sell the products in these rural areas that don’t have stores. When I asked the head of the program why he only employed women he looked at me like I was a moron and said “everyone knows men can’t carry things on their heads.”

Picture of women showing their superior ability to carry things on their heads:

4. And while nothing hilarious was said over at the Cadbury project, I think it is still worth noting. Cadbury recognized that their cocoa supply chain was threatened by decreasing production levels caused by impoverished communities that could not retain farmers or efficiently produce cocoa. Cadbury began a program, being implemented by three Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), to improve technical cocoa growing capabilities and community welfare (e.g., health, education) to improve incomes and standards of living to help people remain in communities and continue to grow cocoa.

In case you were wondering where that Cadbury cream egg started:

The other joy of travelling is when a little cross-cultural germination occurs. On my last day on the job my client told me: “You know, I thought at first that it was very weird that you do not cook or clean. But after I saw the work you did, and how much work you did, I am very impressed. I think it might be ok if some women like you don’t cook and clean because you are very good at other things instead. Like making power point slides.”

Me, fighting for women's lib one power point slide at a time:

What's a Muslim Country?

Arriving in Turkey is when I first realized that I was in my third and half Muslim country since I began my travels: Bangladesh (90% Muslim), India (third largest Muslim population in the world but only 13% are Muslim – that’s the 1/2), the United Arab Emirates (the 20% of the population that is actually from there is predominantly Muslim), and Turkey (96% Muslim). I recently arrived in Ghana – which is 30% Muslim.

I think I never really considered that I was in Muslim countries because the countries were so vastly different from one another. Travelling from India to Bangladesh to the UAE to Turkey to Ghana puts a whole new spin on what a “Muslim country” looks like. They are black, brown, and white. Some have bad food (Ghana), some have good food (Turkey). Some look rich (The Dubai Mall), some look poor (villages in northern Ghana). Some wear burqas; some wear skinny jeans, stripper boots, and head scarves. Sometimes the rules feel restrictive (no booze in Bangladesh), sometimes you’re given so much leeway that you don’t even realize you’re breaking them (my apologies to anyone I almost got arrested in Dubai on my birthday).

I also learned from my time in Turkey touring Mosques, museums, and cave ruins that Christians and Muslims share not only Abraham and Jesus, but also a heck of a lot of stories that I learned in Bible School. On my tour in Cappadocia, Turkey my guide answered a question about why Pigeons were used for their turds (fertilizer) and not eaten for meat. “Well,” my Muslim tour guide said, “they were on Noah’s Ark, and that’s sacred.”

A Company’s Main Objective is to Make a Profit

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

-George Bernard Shaw

I thought of this as I paid the room service guy under the table for the beers I was illegally ordering in Chennai, India during elections. Admittedly, I was also wearing shorts, something I would never wear in public. All cultural norms therefore broken, I found solace in this quote. Ironically, the more I travel, the less I believe in culture. What is culture other than some way of doing things a long time ago for some reason (usually now unknown) that is no longer applicable?

Three years ago I was walking through the streets of Thiruvananthapuram (seriously, that’s what it’s called) in the southern Indian state of Kerala when I found myself walking behind two women – one was a Muslim in a Burqa and the other was a Catholic nun. Do you know how you tell the difference between a woman in a burqa and a woman in a nun habit from behind? You don’t. Because they are both wearing the exact same outfit – an outfit that was designed to fend off high winds in a hot, sandy desert 2000 years ago.

I bring this up is not to say that wearing flowing robes in a humid jungle climate is incorrect, but because culture goes beyond country and religion and permeates organizations too – making change difficult. I have spent the last 2 months of my life trying to teach my NGO client one thing:

1. A company’s main objective is to make a profit.

Surely feels somewhat remedial for some of my MBA friends. But what if you had worked for an NGO your entire life? Your thoughts might go something like this:

“Companies want to exploit the poor.”

“Companies don’t care about CSR or doing good.”

“Companies think our money is never-ending and that they can just use us for free.”

I’ve also met with 10-15 Indian, Bangladeshi, and multi-national corporations while being abroad. Here is their side of the story:

“NGOs don’t realize that we have to make money.”

“We are interested in working with the poor, but we can’t do it for free.”

“NGO's think our money is never-ending and that we can just give them money with no strings attached.”

Did I mention my job is to get NGOs and companies to work together? This was clearly not going well… The next two rules I tried to impart were these:

2. An NGOs main objective is to create a social good.

3. An inclusive business model is when 1 & 2 occur at the same time.

The good thing about a company is that they believe in capitalism, which has proven to be one of the more adaptive religions of our time. So when we met businesses and discussed offering (profitable) pro-poor products and paying NGOs for their services in making these pro-poor products successful, companies were pretty much like, "where do we sign up"?

NGOs were a little slower coming to the table. First we had to remind ourselves that NGOs are not very good at a few things: Making soap and oral rehydration salts, providing banking services and disability insurance, creating industries and long-term employment, buying farming outputs and selling them on the free market, or providing new mobile health technologies. Once that was established, we started to see that companies could be kind of helpful. Now if only they weren’t such dicks…

So, this is why I get paid 50% of my salary to live in India. We decided that if we could make it profitable for companies to leverage what they are good at (employment, innovation, goods, and services) and ensure that their business models provide a social good for the poor (without being exploitative), then perhaps companies could be incentivized to create more inclusive business models that start to include those at the base of the pyramid, who have historically been left out.

Tigers and Lepers

So, I had a weird weekend, even considering that I was in a tiger village in the middle of India. Sunday morning I got woken up by a Hindu procession playing loud music outside my window at 6am and then I got racially profiled by some cops who tried to make me pay a “tourist” fee because they claimed I had lost my passport (which I hadn’t). I had a hotel room that lost power so frequently that I kind of gave up on having light or hot water. Just me and my industrial-strength bug spray. Which I had trouble finding in the dark, but whatever. At one point my host brought me to a leper colony. Not even kidding. I visited 2 events where I was asked to give speeches in front of hundreds of people, 10 events where I got flowers, and 3 homes where I was chastised for not eating enough and got to demonstrate my right-handed eating skills on the floor. I also took a picture with more or less every human I came into contact with.

In one town, I tried to use the bathroom in a villager’s house and was surprised to find that the concrete little room they brought me into had no hole in the ground – only one on the side wall. It turned out that this was only a “#1” toilet and to do “#2” you had to go to the next village over (or a nearby field). I determined all of this through charades as I don’t speak Marwari and the woman helping me didn’t speak English.

In one of the villages that I visited the women were wearing the best outfits – the massive gold nose rings were my favorite – and some of the most brightly colored, beautiful saris. As there were 20 of them in front of me, the color was almost overpowering. I was looking a little dull with my gray pants, gray shirt, and navy blue hat so they made me put a flower in my hat to liven me up a bit.

I was in the countryside to observe my NGOs field operations to get a better idea of how things run so that I can better design processes and business plans. After my time in the Peace Corps, I was not a big fan of NGOs because they tended to start unsustainable programs, provided handouts that created paternalism, and were just checking boxes on development tasks rather than promoting real impact. My current client has more or less renewed my faith in the work that they do. They have certainly moved, in many ways, towards creating programs that are more sustainable and the global push is definitely towards bringing in the private sector to make the things even more sustainable (which is what my work is).

There are still a number of handouts, but that is true of any government project – and in many aspects NGOs are just filling a vacuum left by government. They are building roads and schools, providing access to clean water, and educating children. Some of my Indian friends have argued that this allows the government to ignore the problems and get off scot-free, which is true. But the NGO is also lobbying the local governments and getting them involved in many projects, which certainly adds to the sustainability.

Additionally, I don’t know that it is so bad for NGOs to be filling the government vacuum (and do we really think if NGOs didn’t, the government would step in?) After all, NGOs are sort of like their own de-fact government with a global taxation system. Whereas normal government programs are funded by a redistribution of wealth (taxes) among people in the same country, NGOs are funded by a redistribution of wealth (donations) among people in different countries (we, as Americans, supply the vast majority). If that’s where the money is and governments don’t mind giving up some influence, perhaps it isn’t so bad…

For those of you interested in rural health programs in developing countries, I also had a chance to learn about a really interesting project where a U.S. software company created an application for cell phones that allows government health workers to track health data on mothers and children and provide them healthcare advice. It’s a really amazing application that helps government workers do everything from tell a woman when her due date is, to track a child’s weight, to provide detailed health care advice. I spoke to some healthcare workers about it and they loved it. The start-up costs for development of the app were funded by USAID and my NGO created the health training content. Now that start-up costs have been overcome and value proven, the Government of India is interested in scaling it to other parts of the country, and paying for it. These are the kind of programs that make you think that maybe this whole thing could work…

Bye Bye Bangladesh

So my last day in Bangladesh came last week and, oddly, I was kind of excited to go back to India. I had a great time in Bangladesh. I loved the shopping (great clothes and artisan stuff), and the sites (the countryside was beautiful), and the people I met (Bangladeshi’s were fabulously nice and accommodating). Also, not going to lie, it was kind of fun having drinking be illegal again so that I could justify going to the Westin and American Club with my credit card to by beers. Plus, it forced everyone who wanted to drink into one of like 3 locations, guaranteeing a big party (welcome to the law of unintended consequences, Bangladeshi Government).

But I kind of missed the vegetarian food in India and I definitely felt like I was lacking freedom in Bangladesh…

There is a lot of meat in Bangladesh and, as I will continue to note, I lose my meat appetite when I see cows, chickens, and goats eating garbage. I have eaten ants and I abide by a 20 rather than 5-second rule (10 on dirt floors) so I think otherwise I’m pretty accommodating…

As for the freedom, people tended to tell me what I could and couldn’t do a lot. Sometimes I wonder if it was the language barrier because people scream more loudly so that I can “understand” them. Or, maybe I just look like a moron. At my hotel, when I had an American friend come to visit, they informed me he couldn’t stay in my 2-bedroom hotel room until I convinced the staff that he was my husband. Why my moral standing is anyone’s business is beyond me…

I was also told when I got there that I was “not allowed to go outside alone” which seemed a bit severe. Yes, there are few women on the streets but there are about 2,000 men on every street corner. And I’m bigger than most of them. (Did you know Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world and, according to National Geographic, it is “mathematically impossible to be alone”?). Despite the warnings, I didn’t actually feel unsafe. Although that means nothing because I’ve never felt unsafe doing anything which is probably part of the reason that I am in my current position…but anyway, I understand that there is a higher than average concern about muggings here. There are signs of increased security that you don’t see in India – all of the hotels and apartments we stay in have gates so that our drivers can safely drop us without anyone on the street having access to us, the “tuk tuks” have metal grating on the side which I think is to avoid people grabbing in to rob you. So, while I wasn’t robbed, I was stared at a LOT. However, as no one said anything, it wasn’t too bad. Luckily, thanks to my time in Peru, the men have set the bar exceedingly low for what I think is rude street behavior.

The other thing that is somewhat striking about the streets of Bangladesh is some of the poverty. I’m sure I haven’t even seen the worst of it but there are a number of images that stick in your mind…The shantytown along the river road that my driver takes to work where I see moms giving their kids the morning bath. In the river. The make-shift tarps strung up for the “sidewalk dwellers” and the women sitting on the sidewalk cooking their lunch with a stove. After all, this is home. The boy in a wheelchair that sits outside our office and begs. The man with the gouged out eye covered in tape who tapped on my window to beg… I think you have to grow a pretty thick skin to deal with it.

I

Drivers That Believe in an Afterlife

Last week I had my trip to the Bangladeshi country side. My friend Jordan Mallah once said about India: “They believe in re-incarnation and they drive like it.” While around 85% of Bangladesh is Muslim, and hence would not necessarily believe in re-incarnation like the Hindus, it does appear that most drivers are still banking on an afterlife. I was told by the security officer: “Bangladesh has the second highest number of traffic fatalities in the world!” (Did I catch a hint of pride in his voice??) But no worries, he said “just wear your seat belt.” When I informed him that none of the vehicles that I had driven in so far actually had seatbelts (in fact, they are mysteriously missing from every back seat in India, too) he just gave me a look as if to say “let’s not focus on the details here, lady.”

I’ve attached a video here in case none of you ever get to experience the joy yourselves: http://youtu.be/n47NIWQo8q8

On my second day in the country side, I attended an inauguration ceremony for a development project that was being launched. Apart from sitting in 100 degree heat, which occasionally got worse when the power went out and the fans turned off, and felt even hotter because of the scarf I had to wear to cover my shoulders, I managed to stay alive while listening to people speak in Bangla for 4 hours straight.

There was a parliament member who attended the event and I got to sit next to him during lunch. In order to fit in, I decided I too would eat my meal completely with just my right hand (no left hand here friends, as that’s for, should I say, “post meal”). I didn’t want to seem like some pampered American that required a spoon or a fork. Until they served me prawn. Have you ever tried to crack open a prawn one handed? Well, it’s actually impossible. And the little crustacean squirted right out of its shell and sprayed sauce all over my face and salwar kameez and I was thoroughly embarrassed because everyone just gave me this sad look like I clearly had issues. I wanted to say “you know people, I am actually REALLY good at eating with a fork.”

After the meeting, I met with producer groups and farmers for the specific development project that was being inaugurated. Clearly no one spoke English, and to my own fault I speak no Bangla, so the entire meeting had to be translated by my friendly counterpart, Mac Daddy (I swear, his name sounded similar). The problem with translations is that you can really miss some of the details. Here is an example of how our conversations was flowing: Me to farmers: “How challenging is that?” Mac Daddy turns to the farmers and asks a question that goes on for about a minute. The farmers talk, discuss, argue, Mac Daddy chimes in, they argue some more and then, 5 minutes later, Mac Daddy turns to me and says: “They said, ‘very challenging.’”

Despite the language barrier, I was able to successfully interview a number of suppliers, buyers, wholesalers, rice processors, fish pharmaceutical salesmen (seriously), farmers, community members, and development workers. The goal was to begin to understand where the agricultural value chain was breaking down in the rice and fish markets and how we might empower farmers by improving their position with suppliers and buyers by getting access to technical skills and other agricultural information (like prices). My job in this is to find larger companies that we might be able to partner with who can help provide these things (training, pricing information) while making a profit (so that they are encouraged to keep engaging after the development organization leaves). The biggest opportunity so far appears to be working with telecom players to develop and market products that give farmers access to information – like prices, buyers and sellers locations, technical capabilities, etc. If telecom providers can make money off of these services, and farmers can improve their quality and quantity of output, as well as their negotiating power, it’s a win-win. It also puts the power in the hands of the farmer and continues when the development agency leaves. I guess this is the equivalent of “teaching a man to fish” but in non-biblical times it has become “teaching a man to surf the web.”