Cold Fronts

Unfortunately, it is raining here today.  This is bad news because it keeps me from taking another moto adventure.  Brag photos below:

But, fortunately, the weather is easily explained down here.  Any and all weather in San Pedro is caused by a cold front (or its absence).  There is no such thing as high pressure, southerly winds, frigid Canadian air, moist humid air from the Caribbean; nope.  Cold front.  The only questions are when the cold front arrives, leaves, and what number it is.  They number them.  I heard, "frente frío número 23" on the news back in December.  

I suppose it makes sense if that is really only the variable.  Hopefully it passes soon.  I'm hoping to head to the beach tomorrow to play some volleyball.

Semi Literacy

While the majority of Hondurans are literate (80%) they don't seem to place as high of a premium on accuracy of spelling as most Americans do.  Part of this is due to the fact that Spanish has far fewer wonky rules than English and it doesn't necessarily make sense to devote entire classes to the subject in primary school.  But in general, I think there is less importance applied to spelling.

Not a big deal but sometimes results in some funny situations.  For example, I'm working with one Javier Quan down here.  Javier is the man when it comes to bees in Honduras, let me tell you.  This guy knows everything about bees.  You might think that would mean he could give me a cost model for beekeeping but you would be wrong.  I digress.  Javier Quan.  I have his seen his name in various official documents as:  

 

Javier Kuang

Javier Cuan

Javier Quan (nice!)

Javier Quant (my favorite)

There is also my boy Marco.  Poor guy.  His last name is Teodorocopulus...

Literacy

A few weeks ago I had a visit from a locksmith, Carlos.  My apartment door lock had gotten stuck somehow and the key wouldn't open despite my best and repeated efforts.  Finally I caved and called in help.  

Carlos was a nice guy and we talked about what I was doing down here, his moto that was being held together by wires in many places, and the evils of drinking in excess.  After handing him my fistful of lempiras to pay for his work, I asked for a receipt.  He pulled out his pad of receipts and looked at it uncertainly.  Carlos was illiterate.  He said he had trouble with the long words so I helped him spell "llavin".  He was probably 25-30 years old.  Nice guy.  I have a standing offer to go and play cards with him and his friends at the gas station by City Mall whenever I want.  I've got his number so it just might happen.

Just Pictures

   

1. Fishing in Puerto Cortes

2. Caribbean 

3. Working on the honeys

4. Also working on the honeys (not really)

5. Merendon mountains (one block from work)

6. On my way back from work with lunch

7. 3pm happiness

I Need Some Copper

Quick question, how much does scrap metal fetch per pound?  Answer I don’t know but I bet I could find some Hondurans that do.  At least I assume they do since they are going to the trouble of stealing it.  This bothers me for two reasons.

1.   It makes driving my moto that much more dangerous (don’t tell my mother or lovely girlfriend please). If you can believe it, people steal manhole covers, leaving gaping holes in the streets.  These holes are just big enough to catch my front tire and send me flying, I fear.  Sometimes they are marked by palm fronds poking out the top, but not always.  I guess the largeness and roundness (interview questions there) of the manhole covers makes them easy targets.  Let this be a lesson not to be large and round.

2.  It keeps Carolina from calling other aid agencies for me.  This morning when I asked her if she had the number for Swiss Contact (an NGO) she said yes but I would have to call them on my cell; the phone lines in our neighborhood had been stolen for the copper they contain.  I’m not joking.

I suppose it bothers me just because they are stealing in general.  Mostly for the selfish reasons though.

Oh yeah, and the post title was inspired by this song.  I bet those crafty villains sing this all the way to the banco.

Idiosyncrasies of Dev NGOs

Let me be clear, I like the work my organization does here and think it is powerful stuff.  My colleagues turn around businesses and make them successful.  They convert producers from low margin bulk cacao to high margin fine cacao.  They improve the quality of coffee by matching financiers with opportunities to invest in additional processing.  Good work.  However, I’ve also noticed some interesting aspects to how we go about our work.

For one, we pursue many goals in alleviating poverty: increasing human and financial capital, increasing productivity, finding new markets, and financing cooperatives to capture greater margins at the producer level.  It is this last piece that gives me pause.  How did we decide that farmers deserve these margins and not the businesses?  I get that producers are poor but don’t think that justifies $20+ M USAID projects helping them and excluding the functioning intermediaries.  They also need to provide for employees and their families.  And to be callous, they are frequently harder and more adept workers than the producers we help. 

This type of zero sum game occurs elsewhere also.  For instance, a good friend of mine was working on a project to improve bean production in Nicaragua.  Working for the same organization as me actually.  At one point she mentioned to me that the Nica producers had a cost advantage over Honduran producers (not a shock) and could potentially export to Honduras.  This would help Nica producers but would take even more market share from my fellow Catrachos (Hondurans).  And now, I am proposing recommendations so that Honduran apiarists can replace Guatemalan honey imports.  If I were in Guatemala (where we also have an office) I’d probably be looking at how to increase production there.  I’m all for the best producer taking a market but does it make sense for me to take a country focused approach?

Also, I think working in the non-profit world dulls knowledge of the profit motive.  I’ve frequently heard, “If we could only get the banks to loan” or “We need intermediaries that don’t just think of themselves!” These entities aren’t bleeding heart aid agencies; they are businesses.  If a bank makes bad loans, it goes out of business.  If an intermediary turns altruistic and foregoes profit, he’ll be out of a job soon enough.  Instead of wishing for things that won’t and shouldn’t happen, we should be looking for solutions that work with the market forces that everyone responds to.  I tried to do that in my plan for the potato industry despite some of the push back I got to focus on financing and respecting contracts.  By no means do I think I know best but I do know that businesses generally need to make money.

Okay, last thought, I swear.  We as an NGO take an interesting view of our fellows down here.  For one, we view them as competitors.  I even heard a co-worker describe another NGO as having a monopoly on the honey industry.  A monopoly on helping poor honey producers for free?  Yes, we get aid dollars based on projects that we design and execute and yes, we currently don’t get any for working in the honey industry, but how silly.  You would think that all aid organizations would be interested in cooperating and sharing their unique strengths in the interests of HELPING THE POOR.  Which is my second thought.  We don’t really share our lessons learned here.  We have a “competitor” down here that does very similar work to our own and recently completed a great project.  And we know nothing about how it went down.  Again, shouldn’t they share that info with us?  I wonder what would happen if aid agencies ever saw that they were actually close to eliminating poverty.  Maybe Sachs has thought about this already.

Again, on the whole, we do great work, but, it is interesting to see some of the more peculiar aspects of development.  For one, we think we are qualified to make decisions about who deserves what money, both at a local and national level.  And, while we don’t believe that for-profit institutions should be self interested, we are ourselves.  Peculiar peculiar.

An Insight Into Aspiring Development Professionals

Over the past few months I've done a fair amount of research into policy schools.  Along the way, I found an interesting study on how a certain school viewed diversity.  Even better, the study linked to an excel file of survey responses with quantitative rankings and free text comments.  Brilliant. 

I of course saved this file and started exploring the content.  The prompt asking for opinions on fellow students was far and away the most interesting.  My favorites are below.

For starters:

“The students are below par, almost embarrassingly so...”

“...Teach for America alumns should not be given as many spots in the class.  Their "experiences" do not contribute anything valuable to classroom discussions.”

Playing the race card:

“From an Asian student's point of view, a good portion of HKS students have serious problems with anything involving numbers, such as stats and econ. It is simply shocking to see their middle-school-level math.”

But (aside from Asians) the other countries are really dragging the smart, hard working Americans down:

“A little less diversity and a little higher standard of quality wouldn't go amiss.”

“Fulbright students from abroad are brining down calibre of school and reducing the 'value' of our program even in those countries.”

The second quote really catches my eye.  We know that our snooty writer is English (or is pretending to be; c.f. "calibre") and these Fulbright students have found a way to brine down the quality of something.  Didn’t realize you could “brine” something intangible.  Also, questionable if this even matters since we are only talking about the program's supposed 'value'.

And the riposte:

“Students sometimes take themselves too seriously and bring ego into the classroom.“

“No need to recite your experience ad nauseum before each comment.”

“Students tend to be narcissistic and long winded.”

And probably my favorite:

“Some of the younger students whine more than I think they should.”

Future of development and policy right there.  Hopefully they'll let me in.  And for my nerdier, data minded friends, links!

Check out the study here.

Or focus on mining the data here.