Tic Tac Corruption

After a day of driving for hours to meet with villagers in the field, some of our team decided to venture out of our hotel to get a little exercise and marvel at the beauty of Uganda’s landscape. Mount Abim towered over our hotel and seemed like a reasonable hike for us to do in the couple of hours we had before dinner.

We started the ascent, but a crowd quickly grew of children and young men who were interested in watching four “mzungus” struggle up the hill that they have no problem climbing. Once we got to the top, we quickly we learned that their interests also lied in potentially receiving some kind of reward for “guiding” us up the path.

In Business on the Frontlines, we frequently discuss the difference between aid and development and realized this was an opportunity for us not to buy into the system and simply handout money, especially when nothing was agreed upon from the outset. We did not want to become part of the problem.

Nonetheless, we wished that we had something small, like candy, to reward the younger people for their enthusiasm and smiles as we climbed the hill. As we hiked down, Kirsten remembered that she had a box of Tic Tacs in her purse from the Amsterdam airport. We guessed that there were about 50 mints left in the box, but probably close to 60 children at the bottom of the hill waiting for arrival back on the ground (they, of course, we much faster at getting to the bottom of the hill).

How were we going to going to equitably share the Tic Tacs? We didn’t want to start a riot among the children over the candies and we also wanted to make sure everyone got their fair share.

As we got closer to the bottom, we saw a man amongst the crowd of children who had told us he was a pastor for the local church while on top Mt. Abim. We decided the best method for sharing the Tic Tacs would be to give them to him and instruct him to share them with the children.

After much clapping to celebrate our successful hike at the bottom of the hill, Kirsten carefully took out the Tic Tacs and clearly instructed the pastor to share the Tic Tacs with the larger crowd of children, which appeared to grow to 70-80 people.

The pastor smiled and indicated that he understood our instructions and outstretched his hand. Upon receipt of the box he quickly took out one of the mints, gave it to his own son, pocketed the rest, and walked away.

Shocked at what he had just witnessed we called the pastor back – “wait, no that’s not we went meant. Distribute the mints now, with us here.” The pastor ignored us and kept walking.

This may seem like an inconsequential story, but after everything we learned about corruption and authority in Uganda we failed to put our findings in practice. In a sense, we are glad that it happened because the lessons of “Tic Tac Corruption” keep entering our dialogue.

What should we have done differently? Should we have paid the villagers at the top of the mountain? What about telling the children about the candy so they could hold the pastor accountable? Is the pastor doing the right thing by looking out for his family?

Money and Manila

Today we visited two different groups which have different business models. Our first stop was to pick up Terry from the airport and then we headed off to meet Bote Central. They are producers of high quality coffee from various kinds of beans. Their big draw is marketing Civet (Alamid) coffee in Manila and internationally. But that is not what makes Vie and Basil Reyes unique. Basil used to be in the vinegar market when he learned about the civet that lived in the trees where he was working. Being an entrepreneur, he shifted his business. He and his wife run their entire operation out of the first floor of their house. He is a tinker and constructed his own small scale roaster with an integrated circuit that takes some of the expertise out of the process. This is unique because they want to push this processing capability down--essentially enabling clusters to capture more of the value from their produce. He's a big thinker so he sees a domestic and international market for these locally produced single origin coffees sold through the internet and the government is coming around to his idea by providing him with a grant to get the equipment out to the groups. They are not an NGO--they are business people and so are always looking to expand their marketing from opening their own point of sale roasters to possibly exporting their small scale processing technology in other countries. But they do it with a social goal in their mind as well.

Our second meeting introduced us to Nicholas, head of the Philippine Coffee Board. He represents the old-school business model. The government realized production was dropping, they needed a solution so they contacted the main Manila business group (in Makati, the central business district) and through those cultivated relationships came up with the board. Using government funding, the board distributed fertilizer out to the farmers and used those relationships to gather supply that they turned over to roasters to produce their own specialty coffees. They were successful in stopping and partially reversing the production drop, and they further want to develop the capability to produce coffee. However, their optimal endstate is not having small farmers in business for themselves as it is to create scale that could support a single operation to produce coffee for Manila and export.

So what do these two different perspectives show--Manila is still central to any plans for coffee in the Philippines even though none is grown here because this is where the money is. Relationships matter--a theme we've heard throughout the value chain, and when combined with money, there is a real power dimension that cannot be overlooked. Week 1+ is done, and tomorrow we go into CRS to get down to work.

Team Rwanda checking in; Day 7

At the half-way mark, the Rwanda team is in good spirits! After a marvelous first week, we spent Friday evening recounting events and developing our “week 1” hypothesis. Between our group members, we have traveled by car over 1000 kilometers to the corners of Rwanda and visited representatives from each of CRS’ project divisions. Our meetings have spanned from one-on-ones with co-operative directors and the National University of Rwanda’s Dean, to group meetings with villages of over 300 people who participate in the SILC program. Our first week introductions have led to several exciting ideas about direction for CRS and its programs. We are going to continue testing and improving those rough ideas as we continue meetings next week. But it’s the weekend, so enough about “work.”

After developing our first week hypothesis, we treated ourselves to dinner at one of Kigali’s finest Asian restaurants called “Zen.” We have all been delighted by the number and variety of places to spend our student loans (or sign-on bonuses - for some of us). The restaurant scene is wonderfully established and we have had several meals that would rival even the best dining in the States. We have also visited Bourbon Coffee probably half-a-dozen times for much needed caffeine boosts. Along the way, we have dropped in on Nakumatt (chain of super-markets) three or four times for house-hold necessities. To say we are roughing it would be a stretch.

We will be spending this weekend out of Kigali to visit the volcano park and wild gorilla reserve in Northern Rwanda. As this is being drafted (Saturday morning), our team is humming along the North-South highway route with our trusted driver Robert at the wheel. Our destination is near Musanze, one of the northern-most cities in Rwanda in the high mountains near the beautiful five volcano region. Musanze is much higher altitude than Kigali, and we continue to climb higher and higher into the mountains, while watching thousands of hectors of corn and banana trees pass. About every minute Robert taps his horn to alert pedestrians along the way that we are coming and they should move. This is important because there are pedestrians EVERYWHERE. Our team continues to marvel at the sheer density of Rwanda’s human population. Even in the high mountains far between cities, there is a constant string of neat, rectangular houses and constant foot traffic along the roadside. Each home is accompanied by clean, swept, red clay yards, children playing, plots of subsistence vegetables and droves of locals carrying goods along the shoulder of the road. These beautiful sites accent the rich vegetation and breath-taking mountainous landscape (pictures to follow).

As we travel north and anticipate the exciting visit to the mountain gorillas, our conversation is always drawn back to the events of our stay. On Friday night we spoke to a young Rwandan business man. He told us that of his original clan of 500, only 50 remained alive after 1994. His family fled to Uganda during the genocides, and he only recently returned to his native land. And despite that horrifying context, his fervor and excitement glowed in his eyes as he talked about business and opportunity in Rwanda. As for the future of Rwanda, his words have stuck with us, “everything you see here has happened in the last ten years,” he said “now give us ten more years and just see what we can do.”

It’s time to wrap this up and go see some gorillas, but we want to leave a few thoughts of our first-week, specifically about the people of Rwanda. In the past week, we have been privileged to meet one of the world’s more industrious, welcoming and beautiful people. We are pressed to find barely a foot of the country that is not cultivated, planted and growing crops. Roadways are clean and smooth. Homes are spotless and sturdy. And everywhere we go, we are greeted with warm smiles and strong hand shakes. Anyone who believes Africa is “stuck” in a hopeless cycle hasn’t visited Rwanda yet.

From a happy, healthy, and excited team in Rwanda – happy weekend everyone!

Nestle Demonstration Farm

So Team Philippines split up again for the day but with new groups. Ben, Bridget, and myself drove to Tagum City (north of Davao) to visit our third Nestle site. This time it was their demonstration farm where they train farmers on growing techniques and best practices, and propagate seedlings for distribution. On this small farm of 11 hectares, they expect to produce 3 million seedlings this year in order to help farmers increase production. The Department of Agriculture mandates they produce 1.5 million, but the demand is much higher and last year they ran out. We learned even more about the strains of Robusta that originated from the Ivory Coast that Nestle recommends that these farmers grow. It got us to thinking more about the various varieties of Arabica and various strains of these varieties which would have to be examined before production for an export market could be built.

Aaron, Michelle and Ross are off visiting with the banks to learn more about the financing aspects for coffee. They aren't back yet, so maybe another post later today.

We also bid farewell to Mindanao today as we'll fly back up to Manila later on. Its been a great trip down here so far.

Reflections from Northern Uganda

Team Uganda apologies for the lack of posts. We have been up in Northern Uganda with no access to internet. We have had an amazing couple of days with a lot of moving and impactful moments, hope, and a strong desire to find a sustainable solution to the water situation we have seen first hand here. But as a team, we believe this opportunity is bigger than water.

Since our last post where we visited our first SILC group we have had the opportunity to travel to four more villages in Northern Uganda. Most of these villages are people who were in the in the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps for the last 20 years and have now returned back to their villages with in the last 2 years. These people are starting over with a threat looming of the rebel army coming back.

We had incredible meetings with all the villages. Each village we visited we would further perfect our method for running the meetings. In the end we began the meeting with the whole group – our team, CRS, and the men and the women of the village attending the meetings. From there we would break out into small groups, each with a translator – a women’s group, a men’s group, and a mixed group. We felt that we got the best insights from these breakout sessions where the groups were smaller and the people, particularly the women, felt more comfortable opening up to us.

We have so many stories from these visits that we thought we would just share a few insights and stories in this post:

• As mentioned earlier, many of the people in the villages we met with had been living in IDP camps up until about 2 years ago. Within these villages, we met some incredible powerful people that were orphaned or abducted from their villages by the rebels. Their stories impacted every member of our team. We are still processing these interactions
• We all felt the frustration of the opportunity within the villages. So much of their focus is on obtaining basic needs (getting water, food, etc) that planning for the future is not taken into account. In fact, the word future doesn’t exist in some of the local languages.
  
• There is so much potential and hope of the people in the communities we met with this week.
• One amazing aspect of all the villages we met with was the strength of the communities and their interest in working together to become better and help each other out
• We’ve been eating a lot of local food such as ground hogs (edible rats), goat (including goat intestines), chicken, beef… Greg wins the prize for the most adventurous eater.
• Oscar was the first to test out the sanitation practices of the village and the first ever to receive a standing ovation from the entire community upon exiting the latrine.
  

We are now headed out for Indian food in Kampala to decompress from our intense week!

So a priest walks into confession

and after two hours and no parishioners, finally someone comes. "Did you hear" they ask of now Archbishop Capalla.

"No"

"It's a tie"

That is Capalla's first exposure to Notre Dame during a game against Michigan from his time living in New York as a priest back before any of us were born. We learn all this and more during his first visit to Jollibee after mass this morning (he usually goes to McDonald's). Archbishop Capalla is an great man. One of the original members of the Ulema-Bishops Council in Mindanao that has built ties between the Muslims and Christians, he is full of interesting stories. His brother was in the NPA (Communist army) and now is an prominent businessman, while his brother-in-law was in the Filipino Army. Recently he was invited to Pakistan to help advise on minority issues and reshaping blasphemy laws. So went our interesting morning.

After a great start to a Sunday, we couldn't beat going out to the island off of Davao for a little sun and relaxation at BlueJaz (yes only one z). 3 of 7107 islands visited. We still have some work cut out for us on this visit yet.

Conversions in Northern Uganda

We have successfully converted James, our peace studies student to the “dark side” and we have evidence by the following comments:

-In discussion about how we want to create a PVC (plastic piping) business in Uganda, James offered to be an exporter and most importantly wanted a really cool name for our business.

-Then in a discussion about how our business would run James asked how would we get the capital for that. To which he followed up his capital comment with, “I can’t believe I just used the word capital. I didn’t know what that meant 7 weeks ago!”

James, you can now share this with your father-in-law so he can see all you have learned in grad school!