Sharing Peanuts: Is it sustainable?

Avalino - using leftover scrap pieces of wood from our many yard projects this 7th grader built his own chair in my backgyard! He sits reading a book in the shade of a cashew tree to pass the afternoon heat

March 29, 2018

Today I’m writing about the poor and oppressed. I’ll be writing about compassion and darkness. I’ll wrap things up with a brief update on life here and how things are going.

A few months back I was in Pemba about to catch a flight to Maputo. I just had breakfast at a reasonable priced café – espresso, bottle of water, and an omelette with French fries for about 7 USD, an affordable price on my current living stipend. Before I catch any flight out of Pemba I have a routine: I arrive at the bus station in pemba and grab a transfer to the café near the Teacher Training School for a nice breakfast, go back up to the bus station across the street from the airport, buy some peanuts and bananas, and then head into the airport to check-in. On this specific sunny and overly sticky day (thank you humidity!), I pass a young boy as I’m walking past the fence for the airport parking.

Asking for food and money is a normalcy in many cities, and as an apparent foreigner or just someone with enough finances to catch a flight, that makes even more people in Pemba ask for some money or food. I have two main strategies – say hi and then in Makua say “I don’t want to give you my money” OR just ignore the person, no eye contact, no greeting, no acknowledgement of their presence. When I use some Makua, most people just start laughing and shouting back more Makua phrases. The request for money gets lost in the novelty of a foreigner who learned some of the local language.

Ignoring someone completely is a practice I abhorred in the States. I thought it degraded people by not even recognizing their humanity. In Mozambique, eye contact with a vendor means “YES I WANT TO BUY. COME TO ME!” So I quickly learned not to look at vendors I was interested in – I don’t like being hassled so I’ll try to sneak some glances with my peripheral vision. Oftentimes, I still feel guilty when I completely ignore someone here. I try not to do it as much anymore. Especially since I now speak some Makua I don’t need to ignore people – I can acknowledge their presence and have learned how to reject their request in polite but cultural acceptable ways.

So jumping back to the airport – I’m crossing the sidewalk and about to enter the gate of the airport. A young boy is walking on the sidewalk in front of the main fence heading in the general direction of the bus station. I’m eating some of my freshly roasted and purchased peanuts. The boy is clearly just walking passed – he’s not begging or trying to get things out of people. He takes one glance at the peanuts in my bag and I can see it in his eyes – hunger. Being here long enough, you see what hunger looks like. You notice how different someone’s personality is when they’re hungry. I keep walking and enter the airport parking lot. Then I pause. I stop. He’s hungry. I have so many more peanuts than I need. I always buy more than I need – I figure I’ll run into someone I know or another PCV and share some. I turn around and sure enough the boy is still walking but watching me. I signal to him to come to me and give him a heaping handful of peanuts. He is very grateful and thanks me.

Oftentimes we turn off the compassionate parts of ourselves – I do it and I’ve done it. It’s easier to face pain, suffering, hungry, and desolation when we barely acknowledge it. It’s really easy to say, “I can’t give out food, I can’t give out money, that wouldn’t be sustainable!” And yes, that’s not sustainable. It comes back to the “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime”. Great proverb and I love the idea of building sustainable programs that endure overtime. It’s similar to building and studying great companies – I’m thinking about Built to Last by James Collins: those rare companies, systems, and structures that last beyond the founders lifetime.

However, I also take issue with the oversimplified and overuse of the fish proverb. Here’s the issue I face: I have a fishing pole and a lake with fish in it. My community has no fishing pole, no bait, and no lake with fish. Depending on what program or aspect of my community we’re specifically discussing, maybe they have a Lake but no fish and no pole, maybe they have the pole and bait but no lake with fish. The problem remains that the knowledge of how to fish is not the only barrier. Additionally, it’s nearly impossible to learn anything on an empty stomach. Even the best of teachers would struggle in teaching how to fish if all of their students haven’t eaten in the last 24-plus hours. So, would it not make more sense to give a man a fish AND teach him how to fish AND then determine if the man even has a fishing pole, bait, and a lake with fish in it?

I don’t have a solution or know the answer. However, here’s what I’m going to do: when I cross paths with a young boy who is hungry and I’m snacking away at peanuts -  I’m not going to hesitate or think about, I’ll just give the kid some dang peanuts. It’s not sustainable. It doesn’t solve any issue or anything long term in the boys life. Maybe it creates dependency, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, at least to some extent I have a moral obligation to – at a bare minimum – give of my excess to prevent the pain and suffering of a fellow human being.

Last Saturday we did a workday at my house. For dinner I cooked a chicken and a large vat of French Fries. I knew there was not enough chicken for myself, my sitemate, my housemate, and the 4 boys who helped me that day. I did what I felt like I ought to do. I served my sitemate and housemate and gave the remaining chicken to the boys as they watched “The Incredible Hulk” in Portuguese. It’s rare that families have meat. It’s even more rare for there to be enough meat for it to be a main portion of the meal.

I don’t know what the “best” thing to do is. I don’t know if it’s smart giving out free peanuts or treating the boys to a nicer meal. Part of our responsibility as PCVs is to start projects that can continue after us.  

If we do our jobs correctly, we can pass on what we’ve learned to community members who can continue what we started. I don’t think my community truly needs me. They need food, clean water, etc. Here’s the big difference – I think they need food, water, clothes for school, more access to quality healthcare, and the likes. But here’s what my community members are saying they do and do not need – they don’t say they need more chicken or vegetables or life saving medicine. They say they need Jobs, energy, and a TV. It’s no wonder people only take enough of their malaria medication until they start feeling better (unfortunately this leads to drug resistance). Then the can save the extra pills for the future or sell them or give them to family.

People here are constantly complaining about the lack of jobs. I used to think it was amazing how so many families have small scale businesses! They make badjias (bean patties kind of) and corn based drinks to sell in the market, they collect firewood from the bush to sell in town, they plant peanuts to sell and send their kids to school, they raise chickens and pigs as investment and savings tools. However, these same families still say they want their kids to have jobs – not start entrepreneurial adventures. At first, that seems from anti-cultural to me. We regard entrepreneurs as these people with unique, special, and creative gifts! People willing to risk a lot to gain a lot.

Here, people want stability and safety. They want to work for a regular income so they can buy food themselves, not be freely given food. Lastly, they want energy and a TV. There’s a lot of downtime here and not a lot to do. People want ways to be entertained and to fill there time.

Overall, our American culture should be screaming “They have the perfect attitudes!!” They want work not handouts (yes there are still plenty of people begging for handouts, but our cities are no different). I see lots of opportunities for business development in my local town – the Peanut Butter is just one. Someone could easily start a coconut farm. There’s plenty of land and the climate is just right. 30 acres would be enough to do coconut oil or butter. It’d be relatively low cost of investment with a decent payoff if you had enough to supply to a company in Europe (coconut could be replicated with any handful of tropical plants that can be used to extract oil – Moringa for example). Locally, there’s a need for more vegetable farmers in my town. Vegetables are extremely seasonal here. A 60 meter well, some drip irrigation lines, and blight-resistant seeds and you could be off to the races by cultivating a product for the local market. Build up to 10-15-plus acres and you’d be able to supply other networks in the northern region of Mozambique. CHICKENS! The frozen chickens in Namuno are imported from Nampula and even South Africa. They travel anywhere from 500 to over 1000 km to reach Namuno. You’d need a regular supply of chicks, some land to grow soya and corn (so you can make your own feed), and a bi-yearly trip to Nampula to buy supplements for your feed. Another local market opportunity that would easily expand to the northern region of Mozambique where there are not enough chicken farms. Lastly, a chicken-egg farm! Eggs up here cost 10-12 mets per whereas in the south of Mozambique they are 6-7 mets per. The north has no large scale egg producer. Yet again, another local market waiting for someone to tap into.

Overall, I think there’s plenty of opportunity. There are also plenty of barriers and issues, don’t get me wrong. After being in Mozambique for 18+ months now, here is what I think they really need: a few people willing to invest money and live here for a few years to start some businesses.

Update –

Overall, life for me has been on the up and up the last month-plus. I wake up early, 5-5:30 AM, make some coffee, and read for two hours. Then I workout for two hours. I shower and head off to teach at the high school. After morning classes, I come back home and work for a bit – grading, lesson planning, finishing a project in the yard, dishes, or laundry (never a shortage of tasks!). I take a nap at 1 PM for 30 minutes, prepare for my next class and go teach. Afterwards, I come back and work on a project in the yard, spend some time at the Peanut Butter association, or read my book. So far this year I’ve become a book fiend and it feels amazing!! Dinner, cleaning up the backyard, and I’m in bed by around 7:30 PM. Some more light reading for an hour or so and I flip the switch to bed!

Maybe for some people it sounds like a boring routine. I love it. There’s plenty of adventure mixed into my life – for example I randomly met the judge of my district the last time I was in pemba! He said we need to have drinks and spend time together while in Namuno – unfortunetly all of his family lives in Pemba but he is only allowed to leave Namuno once or twice a month. So he said he gets pretty lonely in Namuno. Locals tend to be afraid or extremely polite of people with high respective positions. So, no family and few people in the town who want to sit and drink with him. At the end of the day, I think we’re all a bit lonely at least. What really sucks is when you are alone feeling lonely. It’s better to be with people knowing that you’re all feeling a bit lonely.

May we all continue to carry the audacity for hope that we CAN and WILL build a better future.

With all of my heart,

~Daniel

P.S. I’ll be back in the Seattle area in the beginning of June for my sister’s wedding. Shoot me a message if you’ll have time to kick it!