Corporate Social Responsibility

I haven't had a chance to blog much over the past several weeks, but I recently had an interesting experience that I thought would be interesting to write about.

As part of my internship at eBay this summer, we have the opportunity to hear from many of our executives as part of a brown-bag lunch program. During these brown-bags, an executive will spend an hour with the interns. He or she will usually spend 30 minutes discussing their background and 30 minutes fielding questions from the audience. It provdes a great opportunity to hear about people's career experiences and their perspectives on the company and the Internet industry in general. For me, it has also been a great opportunity to learn about how private-sector leaders make decisions.

Yesterday, Bob Swan, the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), had his brown-bag sessions with the intern class. As the CFO, Bob basically controls the purse strings for the entire organization - what projects get funded, the size of an organization's budget etc. One of the interns asked Bob about funding initiatives that would typically be classified as 'corporate philanthropy' or 'corporate social reponsibility'. I was surprised and enlightened by Bob's answer: while the company must spend money on meeting regulatory requirements, the most important metric for him was financial return. Financial return is key not because he is cold or heartless, but more because they company is truly responsible to its shareholders, aka investors. Investors did not put money into the company for any other stated purpose than to receive a good return on investment. Fair enough.

Thinking about Bob's comments led me to a couple of thoughts regarding CSR or social-entperise activities:
1. It is important to find socially-oriented business models that are able to be profitable or at least break-even in order to secure and maintain investment. While this seems obvious, there is always a tendency to push for lower returns in order to increase 'give back'. However, I think that creating a sustainable social enterprise is the most impactful outcome and one that requires more dollars be used to fund investment and to build credibility. It also made me realize that there are many benefits to 'incubate' social enterprise ideas within a large company. Being part of a large corporation increases profit motives, but it considerably drives down cost. You can leverage the skills and assets of an entire organization, basically for me. Looking at my project, we get legal, HR, commucations, PR, marketing services for much cheaper than if we were to do it on our own.
2. Government policies matter. If something becomes regulation, it forces all companies to spend money on those issues. Companies are then forced to internalize the costs that would otherwise be bared by society. Regulation is, of course, just one form of policy - rebates, tax credits, and other demand-side incentives would also encourage companies to make investments in socially-oriented initiatives. Many companies in California are investing in solar panels because of rebates offered by PG&E, the state energy company.
3. We are empowered. While regulation and incentives help the economics of socially-oriented initiatives, many companies listen to their people. They also listen to what other organizations are doing. Consequently, employees should take an active role in raising concerns that are close to their hearts and understanding what other companies are doing. If enough companies start acting in a certain way, it becomes 'expected business practice' and acts almost like a regulation. For example, almost all companies currently provide retirement benefits to their employees and companies who do not make this investment in their people may not be able to compete for talent. A more current example would be rebates for 'green' cars. Many companies - Timberland, Adobe etc. - offer to provide their employees with a rebate typically $5,000, if they purchase a 'green' car, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a de facto HR practice if the attention to Green continues.

Is that a Chicken in the back seat?

So those of you who have ever taken a cab in New York City know that it can be a frustrating and harrowing event, but travel in a country where infrastructure is a foreign term is something altogether more harrowing and hilarious.

A few weeks ago, we left Kampala for Jinja, the second largest city, located on Lake Victoria in Southern Uganda. How did we get here? Two and a half hours on a postal bus (87 km) took us here. As in, we rode above the mail. It's perfect - talk about making use of space. we had a raucous group on board and the conductor had oversold the tickets such that 5 or 6 people were standing for the journey.

On our way out, I noticed (for the second time) a cow, tied to the cab of a truck by its horns, on the back of a pickup truck. Every time the truck stopped, the cow's front legs would buckle and the cow/bull would slide forward, despite all its efforts to stay standing. Now this may be of some surprise to you, but having been in a taxi with 10-15 chickens tied to a rope and hanging upside down inside the car (and plantain bananas tied underneath) set the precedent so it was only a mild shock to me. (I later found out a friend rode a matatu/taxi with agoat tied to the roof)

Back to the story - so we were travelling along, tihs happy bunch of hodge podge travelers. As we go, we pass by a market. the hawkers came to teh windows to sell their wares and much to benefit of the standing crowd (which was told to duck if a police car passed by) one seller was eager to sell his bamboo stools; they are quite unlike anything i've seen beofre. made of wood, it is cone shaped with the bottom of the cone cut off, such that if yuo needed some air... you could get plenty. Anyhow, we got to Jinja no problem.

Once here, that's when the adventure began. We worked for a few days in Iganga, a town East of Jinja by maybe 30 km but the journey took a long time because one part of the road was being repaired... and by one part, I mean one side. So drivers for both directions were sharing one side of the road but with one developing world difference - there were no barriers or demarkations. This gives matatu drivers the liscence to swerve all over the roads to avoid the massive pot holes all along the road. matatus and oil tankers. going in both directions. One team member likened it to a game of frogger. I hav ea picture of a cloud of dust, and the cab o fa truck emerging from it. harrowing. and yet, because they all understand the game of chicken and have a desire to live, we live.

For me, I'll just say I'm glad to not take that road to Iganga again. Strange to think that I'll be glad to get back on the postal bus and head to Kampala. Folks, don't try this at home.

Unplug your chargers!

Here is an interesting Green Tip I learned at eBay...

Take charge of your chargers! Cell phone and BlackBerry chargers consume as much energy when your device is plugged in as they do when it’s not.

Pull it out of the socket – if 10% of the world’s cell phone owners did this, we could save enough energy to power 60,000 homes for a year!

Work. So what exactly does my day involve, besides weaving in and out of traffic? our first workshop took place in Kampala with Grace Ministries in Katwe, an area of cramped wood and brick, tin-roofted housing for transient people moving from outside Kampala into and around the city. The organization is led by a tireless, generous-hearted, forward-thinking man named Pastor Livingston. He and his church began a school to meet the needs of local children; the teachers are volunteers who teach 3 classes (the baby, middle and top classes) everything they know from 7 to 1. With few resources, no books and no desks, such a challenging job is made that much more challenging. Imagine needing to sharpen pencils with razor blades because the class doesn't have a sharpener.

And this is a common story among underfunded schools, like the other schools we saw in rural Buganga (named after the smell of gunpowder from the civil war that took place there) and at the Ray of Hope area (built on the now defunct railroad lands - a temporary settlement where the government refuses to give over deeds or do anything with the land). there are simply not enough resoures and teachers are working tirelessly for little to no pay. But they do their work to the best of their abilities and smile at the end of the day. where we come in is to give teachers an opportunity to learn some professional skills we as teachers have been fortunate to learn; basing lessons on national standards (which we've found written by the Ugandan National Curriculum development Council and are distributing), planning units and lessons, learning theory and teaching literacy and ESL.

Meanwhile, some of our team members are also helping org leaders capacity build by setting them up to be able to write grants. A fortuitous meeting with people from Camara project have also helped us to help Grace get access to computers and training. Synergy is a wonderful thing. Our resident nurse has also had a challenging job of teaching first aid to community leaders and purchasing first aid for the organizations; this made more challenging by the extent and source of people's medical needs. how do you advise a woman on ways to stay healthy when her roof is leaking and she cannot afford proper nutrition? The more we see, the more need we see for work to be done by those who are able in communities here, and the need for those in positions of privilege and power to enable those doing good work on the ground; whether through funding, skills training, or better yet, changing the systems and structures that prevent greater equality on this planet we all share.

Jambo! olyotya. (how are you in swahili and bugandan - as a friend mentioned to me before arriving here, there is no simple hello. It's always how are you - so if you ever say hi, the response is "fine. how are you?")

It's been a week in Kampala and so far, it's been a great experience. Every day has been different full of good things. when I first arrived at the backpacker's hostel in southwest Kampala, I was happily surprised to find a kooky building surrounded by a tree-filled oasis. Turns out the compound was once the Prime Minister's grounds. An Aussie ex-military guy with tons of personality bought the place, helped some Rwandan refugees across the border and opened a hostel. The facilities are good here and the place is always buzzing with new faces, non-profit groups at work and travellers from overseas; a great place to network between orgs and to share ideas.

i'm staying in the "round banda", the tarp and grass covered building you see below. It's dark and damp most of the time, but otherwise, it's spacious and well suited to our needs.

Though the trip will take on more members soon, our core group here has consisted of myself and the 4 other staff/volunteers from Fount of Mercy, a group that runs out of the US whose work is to support local, on-the-ground organizations that do education (and health care) for children, widows and the disabled . Oftentimes these are families that have been affected by HIV/AIDS. It's hard to go wrong working with a group of intelligent, compassionate and friendly people. (www.fountofmercy.com) We've planned some teacher education, health education and grant-writing/accounting workshops to give to teachers and community leaders; capacity building for local groups doing good work.

My first day in Kampala city centre included a quick trip to the Old Taxi Park, a bustling chaotic pit full of people selling goods, "boda bodas" or mopeds for hire, and shared taxi vans. It's quite ingenious; post a sign to indicate the destination. wait till the 18 seater fills up, everyone pays a standard fare (or "muzungu" fare - the white/European fare sometimes) and you carpool. Without these, the city would be in gridlock, as it is already busy enough, full of traffic enough and polluted enough. The people are friendly and helpful, always eager to sell their goods but not pushy. (Funny to come from India where bargaining involves much give and take to Uganda, where a low offer is often met with a blank stare rather than a middle ground offer.)

The downtown core is a mix of old low rise concrete buildings and shiny tall towers for hotels and banks. There's lots of construction going on and it feels like the city is headed somewhere. For myself, I'd like to know where but that kind of understanding will have to wait. There are people everywhere and at all hours. Lots of street vendors who lay their wares out on the streets or on the dirt by the sides of sidewalks. I know of 1 streetlight, a new one, in Kampala. i've been told and people are still getting accustomed to using it so crossing the street can be like walking a maze here.

Of course in the city centre, it being the capital, one can find the Parliament, where I went today. It is in session tuesdays to thursdays so when I arrived there today (on a Saturday), I was asked "what are you doing here?" When i responded that I was hoping to tour the building and look around, I was met with a very puzzled face. perhaps it's not a traditional tourist thing to do to see the parliament here? I don't know. Lonely planet did not recommend this one. (the other question I was asked was "are you carrying any weapons?" when I responded no, I was allowed to pass without a bag check... hmm...)

So that's my intro and your intro to this busy city.

Synthesis

I want to push myself to really try to synthesize my experience in Moz. Get below my experience and observation. What did I learn? What questions did my experience raise? I'll try to pull something together and post it on here. Don't expect anything mesmerizing...

Rest of my trip in Mozambique

I apologize for the long radio silence...it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. I wrapped up my trip in Mozambique about two weeks ago, flew back to Boston, drove to Toronto, moved out to San Francisco where I am spending the rest of my summer! For about a week, I amused myself by thinking about how far I had traveled recently.

Before I talk about my experience in California, I wanted to briefly wrap-up my trip to Mozambique. I spent the last week of work putting together a report for the organization that I serving. Lots of Excel and PowerPoint, the typical tools of a former consultant. I spent my last weekend in Mozambique chilling out in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. I met up with a friend from school, ML, who had just arrived in Mozambique for his internship.

I had a blast with ML. We toured Maputo and stuffed ourselves with way too much seafood. On the Friday night, we went to a fish market for dinner. The fish market allows patrons to purchase the day's catch from local fisherman and then take it to restaurants, which are attached to the market, where they cook the food for you. We ordered clams, shrimp and fish. All three dishes were fantastic, especially the shrimp and the clams! We ate so much, we had no desire to tackle Maputo nightlife. Instead, we opted for some intense development discussions back at Marco's place, where I was staying.


On Saturday, we took on the local crafts market. Artisan set up shop in an outdoor plaza. We bargained our way to some paintings, sculptures and other souvenirs. I was also tailed by a street vendor for almost an entire block. He was trying to sell me a drum for 100MT ($4) and I kept turning him down. Somehow he knew that I would crack...so he kept following me. I asked for 50MT, but he wouldn't lower the price nor leave me alone. After an entire block, he finally lowered his price to 80MT and I relented and purchased the drum. I love this photo! I was basically attacked by these artisan vendors while posing for a photo. I just asked ML to take the photo anyway.


The rest of the weekend was more relaxing. We hung out in the gardens of Maputo's nicest hotel, Hotel Polona, which is a restored colonial building with beautiful views of the ocean, we partied at one of Maputo's two nightclubs, and we ate more shrimp.

One of my favourite parts about Maputo are the street signs. Mao Tse Tung Ave. and Lenin Ave. are reminders of Mozambique's socialist past. There are also many streets named after dates of important battles or revolutions, such as 24th of June Avenue. It was amusing to walk around Maputo, if only to check out all the difference street names.

My experience in Maputo was very different from my experience in Chimoio. Maputo is clearly much wealthier than most other parts of Mozambique. Basic infrastructure is better developed - the roads are paved, high-speed internet was available and many parts of the city were lit at night. There is a wide selection of food from Italian to Thai to Ethiopian. There are entire neighbourhoods of large gated mansions with groomed gardens. Most of these mansions had Mercedes-Benzs and BMWs parked in the driveway. The contrast between Maputo, Chimoio and the even small villages provided a clear reminder of how difficult it can be to spread economic development beyond urban centers and capital cities. It also provided a stark reminder of the inequality that exists in the country.

Even though I was only in Mozambique for 4 weeks, it was a fantastic experience. It gave me the opportunity to reflect about much of my coursework over the past year. I don't think I necessarily know how to apply it any better, but I certainly used many of the concepts from the classroom to analyze the problems that I observed first hand. Hopefully, I will actually be able to provide some solutions to these problems after a couple more years of school!

Dubai - Crazy crazy city

Given that one day in a city is never enough to get past first impressions, this blog will be about first impressions about the crazy city I descended upon for a day - Dubai.
A couple stories to illustrate:
I checked in to my "3 star" hotel to find that not only did I have a huge suite (Set at a chuilly 19 degrees) with a massive bed, ginormous windows and my own seating area, but that when I wanted to find a place to fill my water bottle, and was told they didn't have one, the desk manager personally had the bottle filled, and the concierge bring it to me. The rooftop pool and complementary internet service also adds to the more than 3 star appeal of this bustling, hotel-filled city.

Second story: enter the Dubai National Museum. So Dubai doesn't have a huge history but what it has is nestled beneath wind towers meant to draw in the hot still air, and connected with a modern shopping-business complex. Most of the museum is underground. Litterally. And some of the outdoor buildings are non-insulated, door-open, air conditioned. yup. crazy city. To be honest though, it was hot hot hot in Dubai.

Third story: Amidst the spartan warning signs to "remember, we are in a desert", and vast stretches of rolling sand dunes, one can find a very well above-ground irrigation system making emerald green patches of soft grass and baby palms, all of which will line the dusty hot streets, congested highways and fancy hotels.

Fourth story: Where else but in Dubai can you take a tour of the desert that involves a 1 hour 4x4 roller coaster, disney-can't-beat-this ride on the sand dunes, followed by a camel ride, a chance to hold a falcon, take some shisha/hooka, watch some belly dancing (and maybe get pulled on stage) and buffet under teh stars in a "bedouin" compound.

Lastly: Where else can one find more shopping malls selling western designer clothing but local women fully covered; where else can one find so many expat Eurpeans, Indian, Pakistani, and Philippino workers, and so few "locals" and finally, where else can you find so many hotels, being built on man made islands, filled with skating rinks/malls in deserts with ski hills?

Dubai? A crazy crazy city.

Rhyme Time in Mozambique

I figured out the secret to being a marketer in Mozambique. Import products in South Africa that have rhyming brand names. I was very amused by the fact that my house uses Handy Andy washroom cleaner and Hasty Tasty soy sauce.

What am I doing here?

It's probably time that I actually wrote about what I am actually doing here besides learning how to bucket bath, hoe a garden and communicate with hand gestures.

My personal goal for this trip was to spend some time in the field in Africa, work inside an NGO, and attempt to apply concepts I learned in class to 'real world' poverty challenges. To achieve this goal, I signed up for a short volunteer stint with Africare, a US-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses deliver aid to Africa. Africare is currently active in 21 African countries and they have been working on the continent for over 35 years. During my stay here, I am helping Africare evaluate their portfolio of initiatives to create additional revenue streams for small-scale/family-run farmers. I have divided my work into two separate components: 1. small-scale dairy and 2. micro-enterprise programming.

For the small-scale dairy initiative, Africare is looking build a local dairy industry in Chimoio. It is working with a Zimbabwean dairy-farmer who has set-up a dairy processing facility (for milk and cheese) just outside of Chimoio. This dairy farmer is looking to purchase milk from small-scale farmers since he has more production capacity and demand than milk he can produce. Africare would work with the local farmers to teach them how to raise dairy cattle. The farmers would then sell the milk to the Zimbabwean dairy farmer who then process it, package it and sell it both domestically and internationally. I am working on building a finacial model for the project to see if it is economically feasible for the small-scale farmers and for Africare. So far it looks good. Moreover, there are several other factors which suggests that there is a large potential for dairy in Mozambique. First, several other countries have built successful small-scale dairy industries: Malawi, Botswana, Zim, South Africa, Kenya. Second, the macro data suggests that there could be a supply shortage of dairy in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. Mozambique is geographically well positioned to export milk to both of these countries.

From the farmers perspective, dairy farming is much more lucrative than cash crops. Dairy prices are also much more stable than commodities like sunflower or sesame, which would give the farmer a smoother income stream. Of course, there are significant start-up costs as well as a steep learning curve. The farmers will need to change the way the manage cows. Almost all the farmers I have met have never worked with dairy cows, which demand a much higher level of care than a non-dairy cow. For example, many farmers will hit the cows to get them to behave, but dairy cows cannot be hit. They need to be spoken to politely and cannot be stressed. If they are not treated well, they will not produce much milk. I've really enjoyed this project

My second project relates to evaluating Africare's work in helping these small-scale farmers deveop micro-enterprises. A micro-enterprise is basically a small business that has fewer than 5 employees and is usually managed by the owner. For Africare, micro-enterprises provide farmers with another source of income that is separate from their farming income to provide some income diversification. Last week, I had a chance to visit a bakery (see photo on left), a tinsmith/blacksmiths, an oil producer (sunflower and sesame oil) and a soymilk producer (see photo on right) etc. Most of these businesses were run by an association of farmers and I had a chance to speak with the Presidents of these associations to hear about their experience creating a small business and flesh-out the role that Africare should play to support these micro-enterprises.

Based on my field visits, I struck by the business opportunities that existed on these farms - many of these micro-enterprises were profitable. While a farm may appear to be completed isolated, it was likely to be surrounded by other farms. All of these farms were located far away from the closest town. Together, they form a local market for goods and services. Take the bakery that I visited. It was run by a farming association headed by two women (very rare). Each day, two people spend two hours producing 100 rolls. They sell them for 2MT each (roughly 7.5 cents) and they sell-out almost every day. They have a profit margin of 35%, which results in an annual profit of roughly $1,000. They can use the funds to invest in equipment to improve their farms or to expand the bakery. While $1,000 may not seem like a lot of money, you must keep in mind that the average GDP per capita in Mozambique in $200.

The challenge for Africare was two-fold: how to provide these farmers with business skills to grow their existing micro-enterprises and how to train other farmers to set-up their own microenterprises. Going back to the bakery, I found it fascinating that they did not consider expanding production beyond 100 rolls. When I asked them about it, they were afraid that the rolls would not sell, even though they sell out almost every single day! The idea of expanding production seemed very risky to them, even though they could easily scale back production if the additional rolls did not sell. I think if they had more business training or someone who could help them think about their business, they could expand their business to be even more successful.

Education in Mozambique

Over the past week, I had a chance to learn more about the education system in Mozambique. I wanted to share a couple of interesting findings that you might be interested to learn about.
-During the civil war (1976-1992), virtually nobody went to school. Immediately after the war ended, there was a huge focus in getting students back into schools. To facilitate this objective, the government offers night classes at many schools for adult education.
-Primary school is free
-Secondary school is less than 25USD per year, but access is the big problem here. In general, there are very few highs schools, especially in rural areas. Many students will need to move to a city to go to high school, which increases the cost multifold.
-There are no textbooks or materials in schools. The only thing students bring to class are a notebook and a pencil
-There is no teacher certification. You can teach any class that you have passed. However, this rule is not always enforced. One volunteer teacher told me that there was a teacher in his school teaching Grade 11 math having only completed grade 10 math!
-The biggest problem facing the school system is corruption. Teachers have almost absolute power over the students and they aren't shy about using it. Several teachers and students have told me that many teachers will demand bribes for good grades: money from male students and sexual favours from female students. When I first heard this, I was completely shocked. I am even more shocked having discovered that this seems to be a pervasive problem and not a worse-case scenario.

Man's day

Yesterday, I learned a bit about gender issues in Mozambique. I found out that every Friday is Man's Day in Mozambique. Women get one day each year, the International Day of the Woman, while men get one day each week, Friday.

I spent Man's Day having a manly dinner of steak, french fries and beer. I then went home read for a bit and then watched 3 episodes of the West Wing (thanks Dave!).

On a related note, last Friday, June 1, was International Day of the Children, which did not go unnoticed amongst the local street kids. Several of the kids came up to my colleagues asking : "today is International Day of the Children. What are you going to give me?"

To the farm...

Where did I leave off? Right, my farming adventures. After my tour of Gondola's sporting facilities, DB took me to meet a high school student named Isaac. DB had been helping Isaac with his English. DB's efforts were clearly paying off since Isaac and I were able to converse in English without any problems.

Like most people in Gondola (and Mozambique), Isaac's family are farmers. Issac, however, has different ambitions. His goals are to attend university to become an English teacher. While his goal seems completely reasonable, I found out that it wasn't necessarily that easy in Mozambique. He needs to be accepted into university and have the money to pay for tuition. If he successfully completes university, he needs to be lucky enough to secure a teaching job, which often involves knowing a school director or someone in the Ministry of Education. In addition to all of this, his family must stay healthy enough to manage the farm while he is away at school. If one of his parents falls ill, he will likely have to return from University to help out on the farm. After speaking with Isaac, I think he would make a fantastic English teacher, so I hope that he is able to achieve his goal.

Isaac decided to join us on the farm, so the three of us set-off from Gondola. The walk to the farm was beautiful. I felt like I was on a hike. The path we took was roughly one body width wide and we were surrounded by nature on all sides. We walked over hills, ravines and pastures. It was wonderfully peaceful. After 45 minutes, I started to wonder how far the farm was, but I just kept walking and walking. After another 45 minutes, we finally reached the farm. It took us 1.5 hours to get there! I couldn't believe that the farm was so far away from the town, which meant it was just as far from the market, schools, health centres etc.

Upon reach the farm, I met Rakesh, the eldest son of the farm's owner. Rakesh works on the farm while going to school. When we arrived, Rakesh had prepared a traditional lunch of sheema, which is thick cake-like porridge made of white corn flour. It was served with a small portion of vegetable stew. The sheema was shockingly thick: imagine mashed potatoes having a thick dough-like consistency. Sheema is pretty much the daily staple of people in this region, which is called Manica. Unfortunately, it has very little nutritional value, so one of the things that Africare has been doing is teaching people how to make fortified sheema.

After lunch, we finally got to work. Rakesh's farm was typical of most farms in Manica. Most of the land was used for subsistence crops like maize, sorghum and cassava. They had some cash crops like sunflower, sesame and beans. Most of the crops produced on the farm were low in nutritional value, so DB was helping them improve their nutritional intake by creating a garden with vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots, dark leafy greens, beets etc. Vegetables also serve as a good cash crop since they fetch a pretty good price at the market.

I helped them water their garden, which is done completely by hand since they do not have an irrigation system. Luckily, they had dug a well close to the garden, watering was pretty straight forward. After we watered the garden, we worked on turning some cleared fields into seedbeds. I helped till the soil using a hoe, basically I was breaking up the soil so that it is suitable for planting. After breaking up the soil, we used are hands to shape a seed bed. We then tilled the soil again to break it up some more. After the second tilling, we got our hands dirty. We used our hands to break up the soil as fine as possible. We also picked out rocks, clay pieces or random pieces garbage.

After our hands-on treatment, the seedbed was finally ready for planting. Earlier in the day, they had asked me what was my favourite vegetable. I responded with eggplant. They decided to plant eggplant in my honour, which made me feel pretty special. DB also promised to make them eggplant parmesan once they eggplant is harvested! The planting process was pretty straight-forward. We made lines in the seedbed with a stick, dropped seeds into the lines, covered up the seeds with soil and watered thoroughly. DB told me that the seeds should germinate within 3-5 days and that after 3-4 weeks they would transfer the seedlings to the main garden, at which point they would space out the plants to let them grow properly. Most excitingly, they should have some eggplant 5-6 weeks after the transplant.

After we finished planting the eggplant, the sun was starting to set (which happens around 5pm here), so we collected our stuff and headed back up to Rakesh's house. We enjoyed a quick snack of mandioca, a startchy tuber similar to potatoes or taro, and then headed back to Gondola. Mid-way through our walk, the sun had set and we were basically walking in the dark. Lucky for me, I had two experienced tour guides and nothing to carry. During our walk back, we passed a group of women who were carrying what looked to be large bags of maize on their head. In the complete dark! And it's not like it's an easy walk. They had to cross several ravines, which were bridged using a couple of logs. It was absolutely amazing! They were also carrying a radio, so at least they had some entertainment during their walk.

After getting back to Gondola, DB and I hitched a ride back to Chimoio. It was a fantastic way to spend a day and I can't wait until Rakesh and his family receive their first eggplant harvest!

Sunday by a pool in Gondola

Quick post today. At least I'm hoping it will be quick. I wanted to share with you a fantastic experience I had on Sunday. I spent most of the day helping out on an actual farm in Gondola, which is a town 20 km north (northeast, I think) of Chimoio. The farm is actually a good 1.5 hours walk from Gondola town centre, which is not atypical of many farms in Mozambique - a testament to the quality of infrastructure in the country.

Before I get to the farming, let me take you to a giant remnant of colonial rule in Gondola. In this sleepy 1 road town, there are a MASSIVE olympic-sized swimming pool and a beautiful soccer field. The swimming pool has a platform diving board and a kid's pool off to the side. The soccer field has built-in seating, which pours out from a ballroom type facility. Of course, neither facility is properly maintained. The soccer field is still useable, but the rest of the facilities are in complete disrepair. I have a feeling this whole complex was a gathering place for the local socialites, back when the Portuguese ruled the roost.





I'm going to talk about my farming experience in the next post. Before I finish this post, I must give special props to Peace Corps Volunteer DB. DB works as an English teacher at the local high school and helps out on the farm every Sunday. He invited me up to Gondola, took me around and forced me to work on the farm =D. Without his hospitality, I would have never had this experience, so I definitely owe him a big 'thank you'.

Open house!

I wanted to post some photos of the house where I am staying in Chimoio. I think the house tells quite a lot about Mozambique's history with colonialism.

Let's start in the living room. The flooring in the living room is beautiful. I'm pretty sure they are real hard wood floors! Unfortunately, the fire place is completely faux. Otherwise, I'd be making log fires every evenings. You should also notice how spacious the room feels, which I think is a direct result of the lack of furniture except for the massive buffet/hutch thing.

Next up is the kitchen, you will find that the house has a pretty well-stocked kitchen. We have a natural gas burner, a fridge, lots of storage space, and lots of pots and pans. One interesting thing about many houses in Mozambique is that they were built with full plumbing. If you look at the sink, you can see that there are built in faucets. Unfortunately, water only dribbles out of the faucet for about an hour each day and my understand is that the timing is highly variable. As a result, we generally fill up large yellow jerry cans with water using our well in the backyard. Thirty years ago, I'm pretty sure that water flowed from these taps! You can see the jerry can in the photo on the left-hand side. The jerry can also doubles as a dining chair!









On to the bathroom. In the bathroom, you will notice some serious infrastructure. Not only is there a toilet, sink, bathtub with a really nice looking shower, but there is even a bidet! My house back home does not have a bidet.




























Lastly, my bedroom. Check out the awesome curtains. I spent Saturday morning in the clothes market where I bought these used curtains for 80 meticals, which is roughly 3 bucks. I don't know if it was a good deal, but I needed some serious window coverage since I was waking up at 6am every morning from the light. Unfortunately, the curtain didn't cover the entire window, so I've had a supplement it with some random clothes I found. Along the left wall, you will see the make-shift table I've created using some old boxes. In the middle of the room is my mattress as well as some lovely floral bedsheets that are being lent to me by a Peace Corps Volunteer. Most importantly, I have installed my sleeping shield, also known as a mosquito net. If I'm at home, I basically live in this thing - I read, eat dinner, watch episodes of the West Wing in there! The mosquitoes aren't that bad, but they really annoy me and I probably have a wee bit of malaria-paranoia.

That's it! I hope you enjoyed the mini tour of my house in Chimoio. It is certainly a far cry from living on a farm, but it is certainly different from living in Toronto or Boston!

Let's get this started!!!

Wow! My very first blog post. I'm excited! Both Jasmine and I have been meaning to set-up this blog for the past 8 months, but we only just got around to doing it. To be fair, Jas created our blog and picked the name in February. Unfortunately, it has taken us another
three months before we've actually started using it. In case you are wondering, the name of our blog is a mini-tribute to Stuart McLean, a fantastically funny Canadian radio show host, storyteller, and writer (http://www.cbc.ca/vinylcafe/). Well, not that the blog is up and running, I guess it's time for to write about what I am upto.

I am currently volunteering in Chimoio, Mozambique with Africare, an NGO specializing in aid to Africa. This is my very first trip to Africa and I'm certain it will not be my last. I have been here for about a week, arriving on Monday after a 3 day journey from Boston. Getting to Mozambique is not easy. I had to fly from Boston to New York to Dakar to Johannesburg to Maputo to Chimoio. Luckily, I enjoy collecting frequent-flyer miles, so I did get some satisfaction from getting here.

Since arriving in Chimoio, I've settled into my temporary apartment for the next several weeks. Africare has not been able to provide me with accomodations, so I am crashing with a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) who has a fantastic two-bedroom house just 3 minutes from the Africare office. The only downside is that we have zero furniture, unless you include countertops, floors and water canisters. Life is Chimoio has required some adjustments. We have no running water in the house, even though there is built-in plumbing everywhere. So I've had to learn how to take bucket baths (in a bathtub), fetch water from a well, and avoid throwing toilet paper down the toilet. Luckily, the PCV actually pays for a domestic worker to come 3 days a week. She does most of the labour-intensive housework: filling up large jerry cans with well water, laundry and cooking. While she doesn't cook enough to last till her next visit, it's great to have some pre-made food when I come home!

My room consists of a mattress on the floor, a mosquito net and a bunch of boxes containing leftover materials from some random conference. I tried to arrange the boxes to create a make-shift night table and desk. I also went into the market today and bought a curtain to cover-up my window, which lets in way too much light at 6am.

Living in Chimoio has been very enjoyable so far. The weather is perfect for a Canadian. It's roughly 25C (~75-80F) during the day and 15C (~60-65F) in the evenings. I really couldn't ask for anything better. Apparently, being Chinese comes with an interesting association. Many people associate Chinese people are either being: unscrupulous businesspeople looking to take the county's natural resources or deadly kung fu fighters! Apparently, the kids that live next to me are afraid of me because I might roundhouse kick them in the head. Odd, it's the first time I've known of people being afraid of me.

As for work, I'll write more about work in subsequent posts. I've basically been visiting small-scale farmers. Small-scale basically means family-run. These visits give me a chance to understand the situation of small-scale farmers and the role of Africare's programs in improving their livelihood. The picture on the left is from a cattle farm that I visited on Wednesday. The farm is not properly maintained. The owner is a government employee who bought the land as a retirement property. He plans to renovate the property at some point, but until then, he has hired a couple of farmhands to help him keep the place running. Most farmers don't have enough farm land, yet this guys own tons of property and does nothing with it!