“In Saboba here, people are sending their children to school more and more. It is become a big focus.” Yousif was responding to my question around what people in rural communities are striving for.
It was getting to 10 pm. Yousif and I were half-sitting on our bikes, stopped at the side of the dirt road just outside of Saboba town. The dim glow of the last streetlamp of the town cast long shadows where we stood, and frogs (and other critters) could periodically be seen moving in and out of them. The faint odor of burning wood hung in the humid air from when people had been cooking dinner mere hours ago. I was heading back home, but it was really late. Yousif and I had gotten caught up in a long discussion (since 7 pm) on poverty, Ghana, development, what people in Saboba aspire for themselves, their challenges, business… the list goes on. We disagreed some, we agreed some. Yousif is so far one of the only Ghanaians with whom I’m completely comfortable openly discussing sketchy topics, and probably the closest local friend I have to date.
To give a bit of background, work has continued to be an uphill battle. There are challenges too many to count, and my brain is on overdrive trying to find opportunities to make a difference. Things are moving in a positive direction, though, but by the end of each day I’m exhausted. Anyway, I had spent the day visiting communities with Ghana Health Service; they were administering a community-based program on child malnutrition, focused on reducing infant mortality rates. I’ll talk more about that in my next post. Either way, the day had been long and as always exposure to the villages sent me on a roll thinking about the work EWB is doing, the work I am doing, and who/what we are working for. Regardless, I was in a somber mood by the end of the day when I as-usual stopped by Yousif’s roadside egg-and-bread business to say hi. This is how our discussion had started.
“Why education? What will that do for them?” I probed, voicing a thought that had been on my mind for a while.
“How many days are there in a month? 30. or 31. But there is always an end, okay? Has there ever been a month that hasn’t ended?” Used to the amazing Ghanaian way of explaining things, I played along. “No. It always ends.”
“It always ends. Yes.” Yousif repeated. “Well at the end of the month, okay, you collect your salary. You know that every month you’ll collect it. That is what happens when you have education. Saboba here, we’re a farming community. That is what we do. But what happens if your crops die? That is a man’s income for the year, okay. He doesn’t collect a salary.”
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Farming. Agriculture. It is the lifeblood of rural communities. Most of the people living in ‘poverty’; 80% in Northern Ghana; they are all farmers. Even if you have a job, you still farm. That is the main livelihood.
I had decided before I came here that I’d spend every Saturday really digging deep into rural livelihoods. It’s fundamental to the people here, it’s fundamental to development in many places in the world, therefore it’s fundamental that anyone wanting to work in development understands it’s realities.
One Saturday my host father Elijah and I went with a couple of guys from town to his groundnut farm. It was just “close” to the house, as in we walked for 45 minutes to get there. Once there, Elijah negotiated with the guys to have them weed his farm for him. They eventually settled on a price of 230,000 (23 new Ghana Cedis ~ $18 CAD) for the one acre of groundnut. In July, just before the rains become heavy, Elijah will harvest his groundnuts.
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“Ey!” My host sister pointed at my hand. She shook her head vigorously, pointed at my hand again, which had stopped mid-way through cracking a groundnut. She picked another one with her hand, and in one swift move demonstrated how it should be done. I mimicked her, and after a few tries my technique improved.
It was around 8 pm, my second night in Saboba. The entire family, including me, was sitting in a circle around a massive bucket of groundnuts. Last year’s harvest. We were cracking them and dropping them on the ground, shells and all. After we were done for the night, the kids swept all the nuts into a bucket again. They would be laid out in the morning, and the wind would blow away the shells. Then they could be roasted, and sold in the market for 10 peshwas (7 cents) per handful.
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“Amir! Will you accompany to farm?” Last Saturday we trekked to the groundnut farm again, but this time Elijah had acquired 100 small mango trees from World Vision. “I want to plant a mango farm.”
Mangos are a huge cash-crop in Ghana. They sell for up to 70 peshwas each (about 50 cents) which is pretty decent.
“The trees, how did you get them?”
“We wanted Mango trees here, so the village we asked for them.” 10 families in the village had gotten 100 mango trees each from World Vision. I don’t know what program this was part of, but I plan to investigate.
So Elijah and I planted the trees. For each we dug a hole about 2 feet down into the earth, placed a small tree in, and packed the soil in again. The trees had to planted in a grid, about 8 feet apart from each other.
“Won’t this affect your groundnuts?” I asked, since we were planting on the same field.
“No, I won’t grow them after next year. I just plow.” Following a few years of farming crops, the land has to be left fallow, so that the nutrients can replenish.
At one point we came across the collapsed remnants of a burnt tree that had been hit by lightning. I hesitated, uncertain if we should plant a tree right next to it. “Don’t worry,” Elijah reassured me. “It’s dead, Dana will use it to make coal and sell it.” Bewildered, I dug into the earth reeling from the knowledge of yet another income source.
We planted 91 trees that day. Elijah’s mango trees will start to fully fruit in five years. His oldest daughter will be entering senior school next year, followed closely by his second daughter. That money from the mangoes is gonna come in handy.
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I have tried to compile a list of the ways the family makes a living. I’m confident there are many things I don’t know either, but for interest’s sake check this out.
Elijah and Dana’s Income Sources:
- Farming two acres of maize, cleaning it, milling it into powder for T-Zed and selling it at the market or to merchants from Togo who come across the border often.
- Farming two acres of neera. Don’t ask.
- Farming one acre of groundnuts.
- Farming one acre of yams. Then either selling it just like that, or drying and powdering it for T-Zed.
- Making firewood or coal for cooking
- Selling the fully-grown Guinea Fowl, once they hatch kids. Then the cycle repeats.
- Selling cows, similar to the Guinea Fowl. Cattle is the optimum investment here, as you can double your investment when they have calves. If your cattle dies, though, your entire bank account just died.
- Making food (various) and selling it at the market every six days.
Big Expenses:
- Fertilizer, seed, and inputs for farming
- Hiring tractors to plow the fields every year <– expensive
- School fees, textbooks for the kids
- Bread, tea; I think they may be only buying this because I’m living with them.
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Elijah is an innovator. He is smart, sharp, and dedicated to doing the best for his family. “Think, before you do!” he says. He always has something new on the go, new ways to support his family. Is he living in poverty? Maybe. I don’t know, because I haven’t really figured out what that damned word means yet. But I can say this: Elijah’s story is not uncommon. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Ghana, sub-saharan Africa, and the developing world as a whole who are in the same situation. They are striving to do better, to innovate, to grow. There are risks: floods, fires, drought, disease… all risks out of anyone’s control that can obliterate large percentages of farmers’ incomes. But there is potential by the spades.
“Your kids should look at what you have, and think nothing of it because they can do better. If this happens, you have been successful.” This is how Yousif describes it. I can think of many people in Canada who dream of the same thing.
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I want you to think about something. I want you to think about Elijah the next time you see a sad picture of someone in “poverty” plastered on a donation card or poster. I want you to think of innovation, persistence, and brightness when large NGOs beg for your pity money using shallow images. I want you to think about the smiles and laughter I spoke about in my last post, when presented with a pathetic picture of a “poor” child on TV.
These images of poverty… they are skewed. I can put on ragged clothes and look desperate for a camera. Elijah wears old clothes when he farms; obviously, you don’t want your good clothes to become dirty! Hell, in Canada I looked horrible at the end of the day when I was working as a painter. Does that represent who I am? What I do? No. No it doesn’t.
My Engineers Without Borders colleague in Malawi, Duncan McNicholl, has started a photography project to dismantle this inaccurate and degrading image of “poor countries.” Check it out here:
Yes, life is hard for people in Ghana. Yes, public services suck. Yes, people are more vulnerable. But they are not beggars on the street wanting handouts from the “developed world.” Do they have to be, to attract our support? Are we unwilling to help people who are striving to better their lives, rather than drowning in sorrow? Why are NGOs consistently using this disgusting method of imaging? Why does it work?
That’s for you to decide.
