An Industrial Bakery

A few months ago, I posted pictures of a bread oven in Sonsoro. Recently, I toured a new bakery in Kandi. As you will see in the pictures below, there is quite a difference between the two!

The storefront

This bakery is the recent creation of a Kandi entrepreneur who also manufactures potable water and is the leader in technology centers in the city. At the present time, the bakery only produces baguettes, but the owner plans to eventually make pastries such as croissants and pains au chocolat.

Bread production starts around 6 pm and fresh baguettes are available as of about midnight. The owner intends to eventually run a second shift of bread production, but for the moment, there is a shortage of trained bakers to work in his bakery.

The giant electric mixer (the top of the bowl would come up to your waist)

The bread is made using a yeast that requires cold temperatures, thus dozens of blocks of ice are required each night.

100 lbs bags of flour

 
 

The kneading table

When the bread is being produced, an enormous blob of dough (at least 3 feet across) sits on the end of this table as several bakers work on rolling it into snakes of dough that will eventually become baguettes. Then the baguettes are placed on long cloths that have been folded like accordions, with two baguettes in each fold.

The bread oven

 

The final product

Hundreds of baguettes are produced each day. Their sale price is 125 CFA (25 cents). Some baguettes are sold in front of the bakery, while others are distributed to individuals who will sell them throughout Kandi. When the baguettes are sold wholesale, they are sold for 110 CFA (22 cents), meaning the vendor will get a 15 CFA (3 cent) profit on each one.

Bon appétit!

An American's Take on Benin

I recently came across this blog post from an American college student doing a month-long study program in Benin:

"It is hard to travel to a place like Benin and not have a sense of guilt when you leave. I want to do more to help but it is hard to know where to start. I hope that this trip will somehow change the way I live my life. The simple things that we take for granted on a daily basis are amazing……like having a clean place to go to the bathroom (or any place to go to the bathroom really), being able to drink the water, being able to feed our families. The poverty I have witnessed is just not fair…….and it does bring me some guilt. [..] These people live in completely unsanitary conditions all the time. The children are literally playing in garbage. [...] I hope that I will be able to help my own children understand that “we” are all the same….nobody is better than anyone else, and we should all be doing more to help others in need around the world."

This blog post made me cringe. Here's why:

1. Don't insult the Beninese by pitying them. 
Benin is a wonderful place and the Beninese are a dignified people. This post's author pities "these people" because she has a superficial understanding of how their culture works and because she is viewing Beninese culture through American lenses. When I look at the Beninese, I do not see impoverished people. I see proud people who have a strong network of friends and family to take care of them.

2. She misidentifies the problems.
The author writes about the lack of bathroom facilities, lack of access to clean water, and the "completely unsanitary conditions" in which all Beninese supposedly live. She is wrong on every count.
Let's start with the issue of latrines. While there are few latrines in my village, that is not the problem. Even when latrines exist, they are rarely used. The villagers prefer defecating in fields because that is what they have always done and because they do not understand the health implications of open-air defecation. All of our public schools, for instance, have latrines, but many children still bypass the latrines to defecate in the fields behind the schools. Some well-meaning foreign organization built latrines for our public market, but they are not used. The issue is not the absence of latrines, but rather that the villagers are not convinced of the importance of using a latrine.
On the question of clean water, most disease-causing organisms can be removed from water simply by filtering the water through a clean piece of clothing. Thus, relatively clean water is available to all. Therefore, there is not a problem of access to clean water, but rather a lack of education about how and why to make water clean.
As for her claim that the Beninese live in "completely unsanitary conditions," the villagers I know would find that insulting. They take great pride in sweeping their homes and courtyards and doing everything they know to keep their homes clean.

3. The Beninese don't need her help.
This author's heart appears to be in the right place, but what she does not realize is that so much of the help she might be inclined to give would actually be destructive. Too much aid is distributed by foreigners with no or little understanding of the local culture and circumstances, and therefore much aid can even be damaging.
How can the Beninese be the drivers of their own development when Westerners are running the show? How can Benin ever hope to be self-sufficient if Westerners are always offering handouts?

The author of this blog post wrote in the way that Americans are expected to write. When you go to Africa, everyone back home expects you to write about how miserable the Africans are, how poor they are, how needy they are. Ooh, isn't that dreadful? That kind of writing denigrates the proud and wonderful people that you find here. They deserve better.

More on Savings in Benin

After I wrote my last post, I came across two more systems for savings and loans in Benin.

One system is quite familiar: purchasing goods on credit. I was at my friend's dry goods shop earlier this week when a customer bought larger quantities of spaghetti, tomato paste, and bouillon cubes. Since she did not have enough money for her substantial purchase, she bought the goods on credit. She will use the ingredients to make spaghetti to sell, and once she has sold all of the cooked spaghetti, she will have enough money to pay her debt. The shopkeeper records the debt in a notebook and provides a receipt to her customer. I assume most debts are ultimately paid off because otherwise, my shopkeeper friend would surely discontinue this practice.

During another visit to the shop, I learned of another local loan/investment practice, as described by a customer. Farmers can find it difficult to make their harvest money last until the next season, so when a farmer is in desperate need of money, he can sell future sacks of corn in advance for a low rate. In this case, the investor had bought 15 future sacks of corn from a strapped farmer for 5000 CFA each ($10), knowing that when the corn was finally harvested, the sacks would already be worth 12,000 CFA ($24). Through this investment, she thus stood to make $210 in profit, a handsome sum in a country where the median daily wage is $1.25. Unfortunately for the investor, once the corn was harvested, the farmer refused to give her the sacks she had paid for! I do not know what recourse she has, but when the system works, it is a fantastic investment opportunity.

Do not forget either an investment practice I described in the fall: buying goats for cheap in the spring when demand is low, and selling them for top dollar right before Tabaski when demand is high. Since the upkeep of goats is nearly free during the rainy season when plants and water are plentiful, this, too, can be a great investment opportunity.

Another common investment is to buy land and rent it out to field hands. Some teachers, nurses, and other professionals who do not want to dirty their hands in the fields will do this.

As you can see, income in Benin is more complicated than meets the eye. While it may be tempting to label the Beninese as helplessly poor, there are a number of investment, savings, and loan opportunities that an American onlooker might never know existed.

Savings in Benin

As you all know, Africans are nearly always portrayed as impoverished. While this is a reality for many Africans, there is an African middle class and even an upper class, though the latter is rarely seen in rural communities. Still, even members of the African middle class can find themselves with scarcely a dime in their pocket. That is because the notion of economic class here is not necessarily a function of how much money you possess at a given time. The Beninese have monetary habits that are largely dependent on their social practices, notably interdependency.

Beninese spending can be summed up this way: "spend it while it's hot". Savings are rare here because if you have an unexpected expense, you simply borrow money from a friend. Because of that, many Beninese are eager to spend their money while they have it rather than see their money whisked away by a friend in need. Less prudent Beninese spend their money on fancy clothes, beer, and other luxuries, while more prudent Beninese invest the money in a construction project, often a home. If you put your money in bricks and mortar, your friends and family cannot borrow it from you, yet you are still investing in your future.

To illustrate Beninese spending habits, I'll take the example of a teacher friend. As a teacher, he makes an amount of money that is luxurious in a village like Sonsoro. Yet he said that as soon as he gets his money, he goes on a spending frenzy, buying nice clothes and other luxuries, so that two weeks after his monthly payday, he is already down to his last $2, even during months when a bonus doubled his salary. Essentially, no matter how much money he received, he would still spend it all every month.

Some clever Beninese come up with systems that allow them to accumulate assets that can be liquidated when they need a lot of money for a big purchase. For instance, most of the summer's crops have been harvested by Christmas. The corn is stored in sacks to be sold, preferably in the spring when prices are highest. Twenty sacks of corn, for example, is enough to buy a motorcycle if the corn is sold when prices are good. However, some people who never have a dime in their pocket and want to celebrate the holidays with fancy clothes and expensive beverages will sell a sack of corn in December to afford their celebration. These sacks of corn only fetch half of what they would in the spring, so forward-thinking Beninese buy these cheap sacks of corn in December and wait to sell them for a handsome profit in the spring.

Another system to save money for large expenses is a tontine. One of my friends is in a tontine. Every market day (once every four days in Sonsoro), each woman deposits $4 with my friend, who acts as their treasurer. In all, she collects $40 (six participants pay at the normal rate, and two pay at a double rate of $8 each market day). After two market days, once my friend has collected $80, she gives the money to one of the women, who uses it to pay for a large purchase that she needed to save up for. Each woman gets a turn to receive the money until everyone has had their turn, then the tontine cycle starts again. The order in which each woman will get her share may change every cycle, giving a woman who knows she needs the money at a specific time the opportunity to request to be the beneficiary around that date. My friend's tontine has existed for at least eight years, and obviously the system requires a lot of trust. Members of the tontine are not chosen lightly.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, the Beninese spending and borrowing system works against me. When a Beninese person needs to borrow money, they target wealthy friends, relatives, and even strangers, believing they can give most easily (hence the importance of hiding your wealth or spending your wealth). Because of my white skin, I am automatically considered to be wealthy, regardless of whether it is true. This means that I am expected to be a lender, but never a borrower. Furthermore, because I follow American habits of setting some of my money aside in savings for a rainy day, that means I am far more likely than a Beninese person to have money on hand to be borrowed. Also, since American values expect self-sufficiency, it is hard for a volunteer to accept the Beninese system of interdependency to the point of asking someone else for money. Hence, Peace Corps Volunteers generally have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this system.

While some Beninese hate being targeted as lenders, others do not mind because of the local expectation, particularly rooted in the Muslim faith, that all good deeds on this earth will be rewarded by God after death. Therefore, while some Beninese actively hide and spend their money to avoid lending, others are glad to share in anticipation of divine reward.