Rain and Rain

So one thing I've learned in the past week or so is that the rainy season really means rain. There have been a number of storms in the past few days and a few power outages as a result. Now as it's starting to storm again, I figure I better get in my post before the power goes out (as it did again on Friday). Luckily, I was able to stay inside during most of the rain, although I did get soaked one evening (even with my umbrella).

Things are still going well here. Saturday I was roped into a young adults event at church. It was fun and probably good to get to know some people better. Sunday was the kid's service, so there were dozens and dozens of children on the stage singing and dancing and sharing verses. It was good. After church I went out to lunch with Jerry, the man who runs the church's Global Leadership Academy, where young adults enter a year-long program to learn about service and missions. It sounded like the overwhelming emphasis is on learning how to convert others, but generally a good thing. There are two Americans there right now, and I've talked with them a bit. They agreed with my conclusion that KFC is the only American chain here, but one claimed there is a Nandos restaurant (chicken, chicken, and more chicken) in DC. I don't remember anything of the sort, but DC is a big place.

Anyway, I promised some analysis of the pictures I posted. The day was really a good one. First, we visited the chickens again and I was able to see that they'd grown a bit. Tinashe and Pastor Daniel talked with the farmers about things like regulating temperature (some of the houses were a bit warmer than they should have been), helping hurt chicks, and other chicken-raising things. Some farmers were doing better than others. One didn't seem to be putting enough effort into some little things (chickens require a lot of attention) like heat and bedding. Tinashe explained to her that if she wants to make E3,000 (a lot of money for someone in her position), she had to work like she wanted to make it. Afterwards, he and I talked a bit about her circumstances (tough ones for sure), and where the balance was in excusing it. Because the market doesn't care about a person's past, only about the number and weight of chickens. So that's something I'm not sure there's a good answer for.

When we went to the second village, we were in for a real treat. As you saw, their houses were very orderly and well-made. The group was highly motivated and doing things really well. During training, some wild chickens had been wandering near the chicken house and we were fairly certain they had brought disease to the chickens we were trying to raise. So they requested fencing materials. We delivered them Tuesday afternoon and by Thursday morning, they had all the wooden fenceposts up, 3/4 of the guiding wires and 1/2 of the chain link fence. I was really impressed by that. They were really excited about getting their first batch of chicks (arriving today). We initially only had budgeted 1,000 for them (1 farmer) because we were also supplying 1,000 for the other village. But on seeing their preparations and enthusiasm, we stretched our budget a bit and got them an extra 1,000.

So there's a lot of good stuff going on here, and, of course, some challenges. So we keep working!

-Ben

P.S. Wisconsin is looking pretty good, I wish I could get to a game or two. Welcome to the Big Ten Nebraska. And of course Green Bay continues to impress, not only with their victories, but also with their commitment to continue improving. Also, my brother caught a pass in overtime.

P.P.S. Looks like I spent too long typing. The internet is now out. I'll post this as soon as it comes back.

Pictures! Finally!

Our visit got moved to today (Thursday) and instead of posting again on Wednesday apologizing and promising future pictures, I waited until I had pictures uploaded onto my computer. So here they are. Click on an image to see it at full size. They're good resolution.

Travelling down the malaguane in the open back of a 1.5 ton truck. It was the world's deadliest highway until they put a cement divider in the middle. It's moved down a bit since then. Great view though.

Now we're climbing out of the valley up the mountain toward our farmers. This dirt road kills fewer people, but probably only because fewer people drive on it. Bumpy!

A picture from in front of one of the chicken houses. That's just looking at the mountain next door. Those are a couple farms, but as you can see, vast areas of unused land. I can't help thinking that there's SO much potential here and I have no idea how to capture it.

I turned around. This is the chicken house I was in front of. Those tarps on the side open to let heat out or close up to keep it in, depending on what the farmer needs. Chicks need it warm, so right now it's about 32C in there (about 90F).

Chicks, baby chickens, etc. The black thing is a feeder and the white thing on the left is a drinker (upside down bucket, pretty nifty).

One of the farmers talking to Tinashe as she stands right outside the brooder (a smaller space inside the chicken house for the chicks).

Now she's holding one of her chicks. Simply adorable.

Do you know where you'll be spending your next 35 nights? She does. Our farmers sleep in their chicken houses, waking up periodically to fill feeders and drinkers, as well as to put coal in the stove to keep it warm.

Here's the inside of the chicken house. As the chickens grow, she'll open it up to let them use the whole thing. The green bags are feed, and the white one on the right is coal.

Another farmer in her brooder with her chicks. Her chicks were doing very well and we were excited by how they were looking. You can tell from the dispersal of chicks in her brooder (near the stove and farther away) that her temperature is just about perfect.

Not only does she sleep here at night, she's taking care of three kids during the day! They're playing on her "bed" if you can't tell. 

On to site two. They've got their chicken houses up, and they'll get their first 2,000 chicks (2 farmers worth) on Monday. They're excited and very motivated. I was impressed by their efficiency and effort.

The inside of one of the chicken houses. It's divided in the middle (you can't see because it's chicken wire) so two farmers will share it.

Looking out at the next house over. They're all basically identical, which appealed to the orderly side of me.

This is one of the two houses they've used for training. As you can see, there are some feeders and stoves in here. They've also got the tarps up on the sides.

This is the meeting where Pastor Daniel and Tinashe talked to them about the plans and answered their questions. It went well and they're excited to get started. Nice people. They all wanted to hear me greet them in SiSwati, which actually made me bashful.

A look down the center row of the houses. You can see more hillside across the little valley. Again, beautiful area. The mountains and landscapes are amazing.

Kids playing by the fence. We dropped this material off late Tuesday afternoon and they were already half done enclosing the area by Thursday morning. That's work ethic.

More analysis and things tomorrow. Now I've got to get home, as it's about dark here.

-Ben

Go Packers... and Lions?

Not even a full day in and this week is already interesting. Today I went out with Pastor Daniel, our field guy, to the first group of chicken houses. After a brief pause (waiting for the processing plant to pay us), we placed chicks today. Normally we would only place 2,000 but today we placed 4,000 because we have a special order asking for more chickens. That means two houses were filled, and two farmers split each house. At this stage, each farmer only uses about 1/3 of their space because the chicks are quite small (1 day old). As they grow, they will be given more room to move about and the temperature will slowly decrease as they become capable of keeping themselves warm.

Naturally, being a philosopher, I forgot my camera (I've got to blame it on something). Luckily, I'll be going back out with Tinashe on Wednesday, so I can promise you many pictures then. The area is really quite stunning and the houses are really neat to see.

The women were friendly as always, but most of the conversation was in SiSwati, so I mainly observed. I did hold a couple chicks, which is about as exciting as you'd imagine (apparently exciting enough to write home about).

One random note: When I went with Tinashe out to the World Vision event, we passed a tiny rural village (more like a wide spot in the road) with a little shop. The name of it was "Hitler's General Store" and, had I not been seat belted in, I would probably have fallen out of the car. Tinashe saw what I was staring at and laughed. He correctly guessed that such a store would be highly offensive where I come from, but apparently it's not so uncommon to name a man Hitler here. Looking back, I find it very funny that there are probably only a few places named after Hitler in the world and this one is visited almost exclusively by people who are anything but members of the Aryan Master Race. At least it was worth a chuckle.

Anyway, pictures to arrive Wednesday!

-Ben

Another Late Post!

Again, apologies for the late post. The power in the office went out yesterday and I was forced to again postpone until Saturday morning. Of course my parents and grandparents are on there way to Dordt to see my brother's football game (Go Defenders!), so at least they won't notice.

Slowly and steadily, I am building a sense of normalcy here. This week I acquired a refrigerator. That means I was able to have cold milk with my breakfast this morning. For someone who, during one summer, drank a half-gallon for lunch each day, going this long without cold milk has been a trial. But I'm happy to say it's past. Tonight I plan on having grilled cheese sandwiches and a salad for supper.

I also have a real bed with sheets, a blanket, and a comforter. I just got the comforter yesterday, having believed a blanket would be fine for Africa. But I've learned that the temperature here is based entirely on the sun. When the sun is out all day, it will get hot (up to about 95 degrees), and will grow cooler but stay pleasantly warm through the night. However, when it rains, nothing warms up. It might get up to 60 or 70, but nights still get cooler. With no insulation or central heat, that means my bedroom can get pretty chilly. So a comforter was a good investment. It's a new climate, but I think it's nice that summer rain isn't followed by sauna-like weather.

Thursday Tinashe and I went to a World-Vision event out in the country. It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive, and I can see why most people have Toyota pickups or Rav-4s. It was muddy and the roads were not in prime condition. It also seemed like there is less adherence to the concept of lanes here, though that may just be a Tinashe thing. There's no danger (if I'm running on the side of the road, cars will actually move to the complete other side of the road to avoid me), but the painted lines weren't holding the same sacred importance as they do for me.

The event was interesting. World Vision works in the same village or area for 15 years (I found that to be an incredible commitment), and during the past week, they had conducted a business training class for a few dozen young people. The event we attended was a graduation, with presentations from a few NGOs (non-governmental organizations; that includes us), banks, World Vision, and a member of parliament. Although it was in SiSwati and I only caught a few tidbits, Tinashe filled me in on the ride home. It was interesting to see a different development model (a week-long training course), but I felt like it barely helped. These young people now knew how to make a budget, but they didn't have businesses. And unless they had a great idea and got a good loan from a microlending NGO (they have no collateral for a real bank loan), they were in the same spot as when they started. I think World Vision's community-building initiative is great, but I kept thinking how great it wold be if they contracted us to do the business development. It would cost more than a 1-week training seminar, but it could have a serious impact on the community and provide a real change.

I hope everyone is well outside Swaziland as well. I'm sure there's some celebrating in Milwaukee after the Brewers finally managed to clinch the division (after losing a series to the Cubs). Today and tomorrow both Wisconsin and Green Bay test their 2-0 records and I urge my fantasy football teams on to victory (which may depend on whether my cousin trades me Cam Newton). Please pray for missionaries and interns like myself who are going through many of the same things I am. It's also a great week to pray that world leaders see the wisdom in peace and reconciliation and make whatever sacrifices are necessary for it.

-Ben

Edit: I forgot that Wisconsin has played 3 games. And won all of them by gratuitous margins. Of course things will get interesting when we give Nebraska their first taste of their new conference.

Riots and Meetings

Yesterday I got an email from the embassy warning me not to go into Manzini (the commercial hub of Swaziland, just up the road). Apparently, all of the Kombi drivers went on strike and were protesting.

A kombi is a small van that somehow fits 20 people inside and is the main form of public transport in Swaziland.

To get an idea of how this affects Swaziland, imagine all of the cabbies in New York going on strike. While there are more of them,  it's probably equal relative to the smaller population of Swaziland. Except that more people use public transportation here than in New York. In NY, there are taxis everywhere, but they're mostly empty. In Swaziland, they're still everywhere, but they're all full. So when all the drivers go to one spot, don't work, and burn tires to block roads, there's a major problem. One child was killed when police fired tear gas towards the protesters, and a number of protesters were injured by the tear gas, live and rubber bullets, and whips used by the police. So that wasn't good. But the protests mostly died down and the kombis were back at work today.

I was hoping to get to the village today to take some pictures and such, but because it's cold and rainy today, we had our meeting with the farmers here. It was a good time for us to go over the most recent cycle and discuss it with them. There are a few areas where it feels like we're pulling teeth, and I talked to Tinashe about it afterwards, impressed with how calmly he handled them. He just explained that they're family, and I immediately had to repent of my impatient feelings. Which of us wouldn't explain a concept over and over and over again to a family member (for that matter, which of us hasn't!)? You just keep explaining until they understand.

Slowly, so slowly, God is teaching me how to love others as he loves them. And someday, when people are complaining about the fees they're paying on the income that I've just worked extremely hard to help them earn, I hope that I'll be as calm as Tinashe in explaining that we charge fees because it's not free for us to finance them, set up inputs, train them, etc. Today, however, I was simply reminded I've got a long way to go.

-Ben

AfricaWorks Model

I've talked a lot about our business model, so I feel like I should explain it a little bit further. I generally like government programs better than non-governmental organizations (NGOs) because their scale is much larger and can help more than a few people. But both Partners and AfricaWorks have business models that make me wish all aid projects (governments and NGOs) would mirror them.

Step 1: We locate a target group. We were aided by Advocates for Africa's Children. They gave us two groups of women (11 & 14 women in each group) who are taking care of their families and a few orphans each in the community. These women are all rural villagers.

Step 2: After some basic training in the classroom and helping them form an organization, we do hands-on training on how to build a chicken house. We start with the first one and train there, but each woman eventually gets her own chicken house. These aren't cheap, and they make payments over their first three years to pay them back. They are not handouts.

Step 3: Once a farmer has her chicken house and she has been through a few training cycles at the training chicken house, she gets 1,000 chicks. We pay National Chicks about $3,000 to provide 1,000 chicks, vaccinations, medications, and coal for the furnace.

Step 4: The women work hard to raise their chickens. There is a surprisingly complex system of feeding, watering, heating, ventilating, and lighting that needs to be adjusted so it's just right and checked frequently to make sure it stays that way (I had just assumed you spread some feed and make sure the water troughs are full). During this process, Pastor Daniel works with them, giving them weekly reports and answering questions and concerns. He is paid by the farmers at a rate of E0.50 for each chicken brought to the processing plant (This comes to roughly $66 per farmer per cycle on a good day).

Step 5: After about 5 weeks, Pastor Daniel brings the chickens to the processing plant. They are dressed, weighed, and sold to the plant for E19.00/kg (dressed weight). On a good day, the average chicken weights about 1.4 kg and 940+ chickens will be processed. From the final total, AfricaWorks is paid back for the inputs (loan + 3.5% per month), they make a payment on their chicken house, and they keep the balance (anywhere up to $350 or so).

Some challenges that we've run into:

1. The farmers saw no need to hire Pastor Daniel. We convinced them otherwise by showing them they had no way to get the chickens to the processing plant and had very little working knowledge of chicken farming. And we explained to them that we do not exist to give them free goods and services (which is what makes this model unique).

2. Ownership. One of our main goals is to have our farmers recognize their ownership in their farms. This can be seen by the cold snap I mentioned when I arrived. A few of the farmers ran out of heating coal. Most of them simply looked on helplessly while their mortality rates rose, but one woman simply collected firewood and kept her furnace going. That's not the action of an employee, that's the action of a business owner. We're trying to get all of our farmers to think that way.

3. Losses. Some of our farmers haven't gotten very good at this yet. We had two farmers who went to the processing plant last week. Their average weights were around 1.2 and their mortality rates were high. As a result, they ended up posting a loss after everything. Because the entire association (all 11 farmers) guarantee each other, that meant that the association had to cover for them and pay back AfricaWorks for the loan. The association executive committee came to us and wanted us to ask those farmers for reports of what went wrong. We had to explain that the loss was something they needed to work out between themselves and their employee (Pastor Daniel). While we provide training through Pastor Daniel, we're trying to help them understand that they are a business and they need to take responsibility for each other and demand accountability from each other rather than us keeping them in line.

Benefits:

1. Some of the farmers are really getting it. They've been reducing mortality and increasing rates and have seen their profits drastically increase because of it.

2. Sustainability. Once we get the $3000 per farmer for inputs, that money continuously cycles over and over and over, endlessly. AfricaWorks operating costs (both salaried employees) come out of the financing fees (that 3.5%), meaning that both AfricaWorks and the farmers will keep on going no matter what donors do. We are, however, dependent on donors to increase the number of farmers that we can help. Right now, we have our group of 11 farmers going full time (7 cycles per year). Our group of 14 farmers has their chicken houses constructed, but we don't have the $3,000 per farmer to start them raising chickens. That's why we're going after this EU grant.

I hope that helps you understand what we're doing here. It's an exciting model and I'm proud to be working on it.

-Ben

Sometimes...

I apologize to anyone who noticed about the late post. The reason is pretty simple. I was distracted throughout Friday checking news updates. Thursday afternoon (US time), a small plane crashed in central Indiana, killing two young men. They were engineering students at Purdue. I knew the pilot, and although we were not close friends, we knew some of the same people and had shared some very interesting conversations. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends, family and community as they mourn the loss of a good young man. Earth has become a little poorer and heaven a little richer.

One of the strangest things about life is that it keeps going, either in indifference or in defiance of pain and loss. This morning I got up and walked down to Healing Place Church (where I've been attending). A small group gathered and we drove out into the rural areas to a small homestead with probably around a dozen children (although counting small children is never easy and it seemed like 20+). If I understood correctly, the woman there cared for all of these children, but I'm pretty sure they were not all hers (judging by their ages). They had a shelter (3 half-walls and a tin roof) where they met for Bible classes on Sundays, but it was not very suitable shelter from rain, and as the rainy season enters Swaziland, they needed something a bit more suitable. So for 3-4 hours, I hammered nails, sawed logs, shoveled cement, and tried to be useful.

6 20-27 year-old male interns from the Global Leadership Academy (a ministry connected with Healing Place Church and Children's Cup Ministries) came to work with Paster Roger, Stephan (Children's Cup's construction manager), Mitch (Children's Cup's Director), myself, and two guys that Pastor Roger knew (Gifts and Mohammed). Gifts and Mohammed pretty clearly knew what they were doing, but they mostly kept quiet in the face of the raw and untrained enthusiasm displayed by the rest of us. I tried to find a balance between "the white guy who stands around watching" and "the white guy who gets in everybody's way". It definitely was not easy.

So now the entire structure is expanded and enclosed. It was a joy to exert effort to do something with an immediate and clear result (although I was also reminded that I work in an office and am not conditioned for construction). Still, as the Children's Cup guys talked about making this a new "Care Point" (Children's Cup locations where they distribute food, take care of kids, and do some preschooling), I couldn't help but appreciate what I'm doing with AfricaWorks and Partners. While Care Points are great, they require a significant and uninterrupted flow of funds from donors (mostly in the US). I'll explain our model further on Monday, but the money that we get from donors is invested in farmers who pay us back the money and keep the profits when they sell their chickens.

May God be with you,
-Ben