A Culture of Charity?

"When Expectations Start Out on the Wrong Foot..."


Dear FF&B,

The 4^th of July is an interesting holiday for me. Half of the time – on the even years (2008, 2010…), I spend it with extended family during our reunions. There are fireworks, talent shows, late-night card games, and all sorts of togetherness. The rest of the time it’s a crapshoot: rooftop parties, camping, or even quite evenings at home.

This past weekend I was down in San Jose with my family, enjoying pools and barbecues and a lot of joking around. But early on the 4^th I woke to reflect back on how last year I missed seeing my immediate and extended family. I was in Zambia and had just returned from a two and a half day jaunt into the field to locate and interview charcoal sellers. I went to the local backpackers’ where not a single American was in sight and I felt slightly sad for some reason.

I say this particular holiday is interesting because instead of getting super-patriotic, it reminds me of community and what I like about all cultures around the world. (At least it did this past weekend.) In my mind, Christmas and Thanksgiving are about family and either forgiveness or remembering what you appreciate... but this holiday is about what community CAN be. Barbecues and pools with your neighbors and our choices to be willingly close to those around us in the world.

But enough of my random philosophies.

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Rwanda is a small country and there is certain uniformity to it. Even so, nothing can quite approach the cleanliness of Kigali in my mind. I honestly can’t remember a piece of trash on the downtown roads. In comparison, Gisenyi is a more modest town. Some of the roads – particularly those in the upscale lakeside area – are well-maintained and made of asphalt. Meanwhile, the roads near the main market and taxi park (where most of the population seems to reside near) are made of dirt and are congested with traffic. They are fairly tidy, but a little less so than Kigali. And if you are a pedestrian in this area (as Jess and I were), you MUST watch out: the trucks are dodging the ditches, the cars are dodging the trucks, the motorcycles are dodging the cars, the scooters are dodging the motorcycles, the bicycles are dodging the scooters… and (you guessed it), the pedestrians are dodging all of the above. So if you ever are traveling there without transportation… considered yourself forewarned!

Jean Bosco of the Red Cross had arranged for us to meet with the Executive Secretary of the Sector of Rugerero (Emmanuel) upon our arrival. In addition, we had a community meeting set up with the whole village even before we had a chance to meet the cooperative leaders or membership (or even Jean Bosco) in private. We sat at the front of the main assembly room at the Sector Offices, alongside Jean Bosco, the Executive Secretary, and a key District Police Officer (Hubert). I don’t think either Jess or I expected this (at least I didn’t), and it felt a little weird to be on “public display” before we could get a sense of what was happening in the community, but we did just fine. The important thing was to listen to all the translations of what any community leaders said to the general public (such as Jean Bosco, Emmanuel, or Hubert) and try to figure out what expectations (if any) were being magnified. This way, we could be conscientious and forthright in our future communications.

However, there was one thing which this process helped highlight to both of us: so many benefactors had donated things to Rugerero that you could feel the unspoken expectations that our research would result in similar benefaction.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think this was conscious by any means. Who would get upset if you were in the area asking for small-to-modest amounts of time to understand their process in return for some valuable recommendations? But so much money or equipment had been donated in the past that their only recent experience was that foreigners provide direct financial/physical resources (such as solar panels, sun flower oil presses, or thousands in money capital). Or at least that’s the only conclusion I could draw because 3 times in our first few meetings we were told that what the cooperative really needed was a briquetting machine. Never mind that we were students whose grant barely covered our travel costs, nor had we yet studied their process to determine their costs or most dire issues.

Throughout the rest of the trip, our dealings in the Rugerero Sector required us to constantly combat these unspoken expectations, both directly and indirectly. Persuasion, simple declarations that we could not offer money or equipment, forthright refusal to train under the uneconomic circumstances (but with diplomatic explanations), and extreme patience in trying to collect valid data were our weapons. It seemed easy for us to make clear both our financial constraints and our intent to focus on knowledge transfer. Even so, we combated these expectations at every turn. We were told twice (once by Emmanuel and once by a translator) to treat our financial data with a grain of salt because the cooperative (perhaps unintentionally) might inflate their stated costs in expectation that we would still give money (despite our direct declarations), and were only figuring out how much to give. But as any good interviewer who has been in the field knows, we can only hope that our patience and willingness to ask for the same question several different ways helped us triangulate the best data available…

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Our original intent in Gisenyi was to view COTRAPAE’s operations and perhaps do technical/process training – preferably to a new region that could use COTRAPAE as experienced partners for learning purposes. While it was true that COTRAPAE likely needed some refreshers, we hypothesized that it would be best for COTRAPAE to train others, as there was little in the way of follow-up that would be available in the near future. Therefore, helping “train the trainers” would reinforce good techniques and maybe help develop a new dissemination model for this type of charcoal production. The only thing we wanted to do first was determine whether the economics made it at least feasible for profit-making (otherwise, the cooperative was better off using its money and people in other endeavors).

One problem: we found out that COTRAPAE was losing money making charcoal. This was not a matter of efficiency; the purchase of raw materials to make a day’s worth of agri-charcoal cost more than buying a day’s worth of wood charcoal… even before paying someone for their time.

In one way, this was a huge blow to our collective psyche. We had been prepped and eager to help disseminate a good alternative to wood charcoal production. But we weren’t prepared to do it at the expense of someone’s livelihood.

In the end, Jess and I consoled each other with the reminder that this is EXACTLY what we came to find out: under what conditions it was economically feasible to produce agri-charcoal in Rwanda. This country needed to make sure it encouraged SUSTAINABLE activities (environmentally, socially, and financially). The fact was that the people who needed to find income-generating activities the most – the genocide survivors living in the resettlement village of Rugerero – were at a distinct disadvantage because they did not own any land… and therefore did not have cheap access to the raw material needed to make the charcoal. A big briquetting machine would only COMPOUND the problem by making them lose money faster. COTRAPAE would need to determine how to reduce its cost structure if it wanted to continue this business.

And that’s how we came to the conclusion that COTRAPAE didn’t need technical training (though it would help)… what it primarily needed was business training. As “the business expert” I had to buckle down and put together a short business training appropriate for the village level.


To be continued...

Safe and Peaceful Journeys,
-Stan