Work...maybe..?

So I got back my shirts, for the second time, from Mustapha's tailor yesterday. First time
round he did a great job, but I figure he must have mixed up the measurements cause both
shirts were too short and the head opening on one was too small. The shortness wasn't so much
a case of them being unwearable, more that self-conscious feeling when you wish it had just
a bit more length. Anyway I ended up cruising past the guy's shop again, turns out he still
had some scraps of my material left and was able to add a few inches to them both...all in
all a fairly successful culture outing if I don't say so myself. Major problem now is that I
went all out bling on one of the shirts, it's green with this gold foil patterns on it,
definitely ridiculous and awesome. Thing is the consensus around the office is that it will
all rub off the first time I wash it, so the eternal dilemma is do I wash it and continue to
wear it in-country? Or do I use it sparingly in an effort to preserve it as a
memento/exhibition piece for back home? Thoughts anyone?
Now that I've dispensed with my vanity for the day, I wanted to put down some of the
work streams I've been chipping away at lately..cause I am supposed to be working and not
just perusing the Internet right? Want to forewarn y'all though, I'm going to be posing some
questions that I don't know the answer to, so if any one's got any suggestions throw them my
way.
My first, as well as my only really mandated work stream, is the processing of the community
baseline data. Fairly sure I've talked about it before, but for those starting here it is a
basic community survey that was designed to profile demographics, shea butter production
practices, as well as unearth some indicators that could be revisited in later years to
determine what, if any impact the association may have had on an individual member level.
Guess the first things I've noticed while compiling the data? That all these type of surveys
come with a truck load of assumptions, are never administered as planned, and when there the
first stab of some bush wild civil engineer, they sometimes got a..cough...few holes! All in
all though I've been able to glean some meaningful information, particularly with regards
to production and profitability. Seems that near all the members buy their raw shea nuts in
the market as opposed to picking them locally, which is contrary to what the association had
believed, or at least publicly stated. Quality, effort involved, and availability out of
season are some of the rationals I've come up with for the practice, but if this output
could be minimized or eliminated the profitability of shea would greatly increase. So the
question is, how do we do this? Been thinking that establishing a stronger connection
between nut pickers and processors would be a good start, as well as perhaps devising a
system by which individual groups could be divided into specialized units, while still
sharing the profits jointly. This though requires an analysis of the effort input needed for
both practices. Another thought is developing a better system of storage for the nuts, so
that when they are in season, and thus cheaper to purchase, groups could buy, all the while
stockpiling nuts to use during the more expensive off-season. Segwaying to the profitability
track, on the outside the activities of the producers seem to be relatively profitable,
averaging out at 40ish%, yet the general consensus is that they are losing money overall.
Would have been nice if someone mentioned that BEFORE we did the survey so a question along
those lines could have been included, but eh, what you going to do? My thought is to further
investigate the processes of the individual groups, since all returned that they were using
the best practices instructed by the assoc., which should be efficient and thus profitable.
Chains got to have a busted link somewhere though....
Maybe this next one reeks a bit on societal tampering, but nonetheless I believe it would
not only benefit the development of the shea industry, but also the community as a whole,
both long and short term. What I've been batting around is the idea of community centers,
like the ones we take for granted back home, as a tool to not only improve the productivity
of individual shea groups but also as a method to promote more equality and leadership
tendencies...pretty lofty, aye? Looking first at the shea industry, I systemic problem seems
to be a lack of organization both collectively within the assoc. as well as within
individual groups. Sure they have a group exec. and individual group execs, but it isn't the
kind of structure that will actually make a tangible difference in production or
efficiency. To do that I think each group must be run like a small scale production factory,
having a central processing and storage centre, as well as a set work schedule. An
additional bonus to this approach would be that it would allow each of the groups to
successfully develop individually while waiting for a larger scale international buyer.
Which, when it arrived, could facilitate a quasi corporate merger of the groups, which since
already organized and productive, could actually yield the strong, one voiced market force,
that as of now is nothing but an A2N pipe dream.
Turning to my own personal trip, thrashing around with the JF brain trust we hit upon one of
the major factors in the slow development of Ghana being a lack of strong leaders. Delving a
bit deeper we stumbled on a few possible factors(obviously these are generalizations), one,
people are largely taught to be subservient and obedient and thus are completely out of
there element when asked to take on the responsibility/risk involved in leadership
positions. The result of this cultural conditioning is the chronic buck passing mentality
that seems to be present here. Two, community meetings are usually held in the chief's
compound, so while they my have the appearance of a democratic forum, decisions are made in
a autocratic manner. Wherein the male segment decides, and above them the chief decides.
Both of these problems could, at least in our minds, be addressed or at least mitigated by
the creation of community centers. They would offer a neutral site for meetings, and drawing
from my own youth, could provide a location for sport and other activities. Which when we
looked back on it was where a lot of us feel we first started to develop leadership
tendencies, wanting the puck on your stick so to speak.
Rambled on a fair bit on this one ladies and gents, I'll try and shorten it down for the
next few, but I hope some of the points came across.
Hoist one for me,
Cheers