Phase 2 - Day 11

"Adam get up man we have a lot to do."

"Yup, I'm already up. Let's finish this.

And that's how the final day started. The sun wasn't up yet, but we were. And it's no surprise that we were. The death of the young man on Christmas was hard to take in and we only had one more day left to finish all of our work, but Darryl and I knew that there was a lot that we needed to accomplish by the time the sun set today. The people were counting on us.

As Darryl mentioned in his post yesterday, the group of farmers assembled together on Christmas and created a group name (Kano Egye Man - Group Strength) and put together an impressive constitution. However, in order to make the Phase 2 deal final, we needed to create a contract on the behalf of ADI, explain it to the farmers, make the final adjustments to the loan, and sign the contract. So we immediately started on the document. We debated and discussed what details it would need. Do the farmers own the pumps and materials after they pay back the loan? Yes. Interest? 10% annually. What if they default? ADI and Kano Egye Man will share the risk. Before we knew it, we had the complete document before our eyes. "Adam, why don't you look more relieved?" he asked me, "You know, this is a big deal." The truth is, I was just nervous. We still had more to do. What if the group disagreed with the contract and we didn't have time to construct another? The deal would be completely off and Phase 2 would have been for nothing...

We assembled the group and told them we had written a complete loan contract in response to the Kano Egye Man constitution. We had Foster translate it, and sat anxiously as we waited for their response. The group nodded their heads in agreement as Foster slowly read the clauses (especially when he brought up the potential group profits!).

(Kano Egye Man and ADI)

He finished and asked if they had any questions. They discussed amongst themselves and finally, the Secretary of the KEM board gave their reply. "The contract is good. However, we will need a plow too. The land in the dry-seas0n is hard. Also, the price of fuel for the pumps was not included. We need that too." Ahh, how did we forget to add the fuel?! Darryl and I told the group that we would be willing to add the costs to the loan, however that would mean less total profits for them as a result. The group agreed.

With no time to spare, we ran back to the house and got on the laptop. I quickly opened the excel spreadsheet and added the fuel and plow prices to the model.

The profits still looked good. We were almost there. As the sun started to set, we reassembled the KEM board and presented them with the final contract (with adjusted costs). The Chairman, the Secretary, and the Treasurer were all there to sign. They looked over the final figures and then signed their names to the paper. Darryl and I did the same. It was done! We shook hands as both sides discussed how optimistic they were about the next dry season. The conclusion of Phase 2 felt so good. Darryl was right - this really was a big deal.

Adam

(The handshake with the Chairman - haha yes I'm tall)

Phase 2 - Day 10

Day 10: A Not-So Merry Christmas

As usual, the roosters and the sheep were the first to rise this morning. But Foster was not too far behind. At the crack of dawn, he came banging on the door yelling “Wake up, it’s Christmas!” After Adam and I slowly dragged ourselves out of bed, we were handed our first Christmas present of the day. Dan delivered a document from the farmers. They had met and written a constitution, outlining their rules of operations, potential loan repayment schemes, and even giving their group a name (Kano Egye Man – meaning Group Strength and Togetherness). Needless to say, this Christmas was off to a great start!

As we dressed and prepared ourselves to meet with the group of farmers, Foster returned with more news. “I must go,” he said. “Someone has passed.” Startled, Adam and I also left and headed towards the big Mango tree where all of the town meetings occur. Instead of hearing Christmas carols and seeing children scurry from house to house collecting gifts of yams and cassava, we only heard sobs of agony and saw devastated friends and family clawing at the Earth, pleading for the morning news to be untrue. Along the way, we learned that a 17 year old boy had died early in the morning. He died of Hepatitis B, a gruesomely easy illness to prevent. Today gave too real of a meaning to the phrase we hear day in and day out during our interviews: “I will use the dry-season money to pay for my children to go to the hospital.” So instead of dancing and drinking pito, we sat under the mango tree as the church choir sang songs of mourning. In the background, men scrambled to the cemetery to dig a grave. In Ekumdipe, the time one has to say goodbye to loved ones is cut short by a lack of embalming fluid.

Towards the end of the funeral, everyone dropped donations into a bucket for the family of the deceased. Nana, a young lady around our age, then told us, “Christmas is over. Today we mourn.” We put Project RISE aside for the day and focused our hearts and prayers on the young man and his family.

Darryl

Phase 2 - Day 9

I can feel us getting close to the end now! Darryl and I visited the market today. It was quite a sight! Christmas is tomorrow, so the people of Ekumdipe all gathered in this central location to buy and sell a variety of items just in time for the holiday. Of course, this represented a perfect opportunity to get the rest of the needed inputs for our financial model. After talking to the Bawku farmer, we decided to have the new farming group grow onion farms this year (relatively easy to grow and maintain). However, we still had plenty of questions about this type of crop. How do you sell onions? How much do they cost individually? How much do they cost in a bag? How much do they cost now, in March, and then in September? All of these were questions we needed to have answered. We recruited Nana, a local woman our age, to come help us determine the prices and then we went to work.

("Nana, how much does one bag of onions cost?")

Once in the market, we jumped from vegetable shop to vegetable shop in order to obtain all of our information. This was important, because we wanted to make sure our numbers were not skewed because of any particular shop. Not to mention, the Sale Ladies got annoyed and told us to move once they realized we only wanted to ask questions and not buy anything! In about 2 hours, we had the information we needed.

A bag of onions could sell for about 60 Ghana Cedis (about 40 USD) in March, at the end of the dry-season harvest. The Bawku farmer told us that one could expect to grow 30 bags of onions on one acre. We planned on starting a new 4-acre farm. Clearly it didn’t take rocket science or even financial modeling to see what kinds revenue the group of farmers could be looking at by the end of the next season. We are onto something here…

Tomorrow is Christmas! Darryl and I have hopes for getting some work done, but who are we kidding. This should be a great chance to hang out and enjoy the company of the people in the community.

-Adam

Phase 2 - Day 8

Ahh, another day of hard work! Today Darryl and I went around trying to talk to the farmers from our system that we didn’t get a chance to talk to yesterday. We were able to get some valuable information. The conversations today however, were perfect examples of some of the huge communication barriers we have had to overcome daily. First of all, most of the farmers don’t speak English. So we had Foster, a student our age who helped with interviews last year, translate for us. Moreover, many of the accounts we heard did not match up chronologically with the stories we heard yesterday. One farmer told us that the group finished planting in February when the others previously told us November!
Nonetheless, we figured out ways to get around these issues. We found ways to reword our questions whenever the answers did not match up. Also, we tried to focus on the duration and order of events rather then where they fell on last year’s calendar. Using these techniques, we were able to get around the communication issues and elicit some great information. One woman we spoke to offered a completely different perspective to everything we have heard thus far. She mentioned how the farmers last year split into different work groups based gender. She also highlighted that the women had more time to tend to the dry-season farms because they did not have to harvest the rainy season yams like the men. Finally, she informed us on how the deaths of the Chief and a young boy seriously disrupted productivity last year. It’s anecdotes like these that are able to give us the valuable types of information we can’t find in textbooks! Tomorrow we’re off to the market. I’m very happy with the progress we’re making with Phase 2.

-Adam

Phase 2 - Day 7

Darryl and I arranged a meeting with 6 of the 10 farmers today. We already met with the Bawku expert and the first local farmer, but given time constraints, we needed a group meeting in order to get to the rest of the participants in time. The group included 4 of the farmers from the previous farm as well as 2 new individuals. We started with some basic questions. We asked the farmers why they originally joined the system and what they hoped to gain. The general consensus was that they knew they could make more money (needed to pay for food, medical expenses, and school fees for their children) from farming in the dry-season. They also emphasized that they knew people in America had given us the funds for the pumps and pipes, so they did not want to disappoint them.

Next , we moved to more specific questions. We asked the farmers to give us the step-by-step details on the dry-season process last year. They explained to us how they went from initially clearing the land all the way to transplanting and watering the seeds and gave us the respective durations for each step. Then we started prying into what they felt went wrong. Various reasons were given but we tried to identify the main issues (too late of a start, shortage of seeds, distractions like the death of the Chief, etc). However, they clearly stated that they understood that most new and worthwhile things in life take time, so they felt that they could surely create a better yield this year. We also promised to make sure we’d do our part to help them with whatever improvements they needed.

From there, we started discussing the loan structure. We explained that the pumps and the pipe system were not free and to use them, they would eventually have to pay back so we could buy supplies for more community members and other communities. The farmers all agreed. From there, Darryl and I told the group that we would be taking steps to determine the cost inputs for the total system and the cost of the loan. We then encouraged the farmers to discuss amongst themselves to create a constitution on how they would pay back the loan, save money for reinvesting in the farm, and split the remaining profits. After the plan was laid out, we agreed to meet again later in the week to finalize the agreement. This was another huge step for Phase 2.

Phase 2 - Day 6

Today we were able go explore the potential site of the first local farmer’s dry-season plot. This man, like Dan, is also a teacher. However, he said that that he saw the Bawku man’s farm and instantly became interested in the extra opportunity to make money. We went to his area (which was currently covered with yam mounds – the staple crop in the area that grows in the rainy season) to discuss his involvement in the dry-season system. As with the Bawku farmer, we asked him about every step that he would need to take and how much money he thought the inputs would cost. This was important in order to determine how large the gap of expertise is between the outside demonstrator and the local participants. We also aimed to push back on individuals’ mentality on profitability. When we asked the man if he could make enough money to pay back for the system in one dry season, he replied, “Certainly.”

(From left to right: The farmer, myself, Dan, and Darryl discussing the particulars of the future dry-season farm)

However, when we told him that he would have to potentially pay for the costs in the form of a loan, he became much more hesitant and started asking more questions. This was an important discovery because Darryl and I have a hypothesis that perhaps the system yield was not as high as expected due to the lack of proper incentivization in Phase 1. In the first phase, people knew that by joining our system they could make more money, but they had nothing to lose if they fell short. By actively notifying the members of the community that they will have to pay-back for their opportunity to use our pumps and pipes this time around, we not only weed out the less serious participants, but we also make sure that those who do attempt it will try harder. If the rest of the farmers we talk to exhibit similar behaviors as the one we spoke to today then we may be onto something! Tomorrow, we’ll have a group meeting with the rest of the 10 farmers. I’m really looking forward to this.

-Adam

(Discussing the profitability of course)

Phase 2 - Day 5

Today was a great step for Phase 2. Darryl and I were able to link up with Dan, a local teacher, and prominent figure in the community, and one of our major sets of eyes and ears on the ground here. We went to the Bawku (a region 2 hours north of Ekumdipe that farms during the dry-season regularly) man’s farm in order to see his progress thus far, talk to him about dry-season particulars, and assess the profitability of the next season. By the time we started viewing the field, it was apparent that this man was an expert. He already had a substantial cluster onion seedlings sprouting from the ground. His farm beds were much wider and squarer than the type of ridges the people of Ekumdipe used last year (he mentioned that this was to retain more water during the arid conditions). The farmer even utilized different technology! He used hoes with narrower blades than the people in the area were accustomed to because he said it made weeding easier. If all of these differences are indeed important to the success of a dry-season yield, then it was no surprise that the people of the community did not do as well as we hoped last year. Seeing that we now had an expert that could help teach the others in the area was definitely a reassuring feeling for us.

After he showed us around his 2 acres, we started actively prying him with questions about profitability. This different type of approach is a key aspect of Phase 2. Last year, we took the word of agricultural experts and from literature about the potential profitability of the area. However, now, we are challenging what everyone says and everything we see. We asked him how many bags of onions his two acres could provide him. We then asked how much money he expected to receive per bag. We then we asked for a detailed schedule of the steps he expected to take from now until the harvest and then asked for the estimated price of every respective step. All of this information would later become inputs of a financial model we were creating to determine profitability of the dry-season. As someone who’s worked in finance for three summers, I am not a stranger to financial modeling. However, it was refreshing to see how some of the skills I was learning in the business world could be directly applicable to helping out those in need in this rural community in Ghana. Tomorrow we’re off to talk with a local farmer in order to contrast what he tells us against the Bawku farmer’s information. Thanks for all the support everyone!

-Adam