Help With a Twist

This last month – I started a project with two ladies … but the project is a twist of three types of projects combined.

• habanaaye: traditional Fulani aid for the poor in their community, those who have a herd of animals (cows, sheep, goats) can loan a female animal to someone in need.  This person will keep the animal for 1-2 years, after which, the original animal is returned to its owner and the animals born during that time are kept by the borrower to start their own herd.
• l’embouche:  this is a program that I heard of through Samaritan’s Purse … literally, it translates to “animal fattening”.  The concept is that a widow (or someone in need) is given a male sheep to keep and feed for a year.  In the culture here, once a year, a sheep is sacrificed in their religion … and the cost of these animals sky-rocket during this month.  So, the widow after a year, has a sheep to sell at anywhere from 2-5 times its original value.  She will then with the funds made buy two sheep – one for another widow and one with which to start her own herd.
• micro-enterprise: In a micro-enterprise program, I would generally want the recipient, or recipient group, to save 1/2 of the needed project funds to start a program … their investment into helping themselves.  The remaining half would then be a loan that would be repaid over the first year of their project as they make money. … A small enough percentage of their earnings so that they are also making enough funds to reinvest in their program and make a profit; but conversely, a large enough percentage so as not to draw out their repayment period over more than a year.

I started to reflect on these three project ideas in May – during a month of surveys in which I met one Fulani lady in great need.

Meet Fulani Lady 1:

In the last year, Ummu’s husband died in a market accident.  He earned money by hiring himself out as a market shepherd – one who would herd animals bought to the land of their new owner.  One day, he was gored in the stomach by a cow horn and died.  He and his wife lived with her older mother.  Then this mother got sick, and the widow sold two of her three goats to buy medicine … the mother died.  Her oldest child, a daughter, sent her daughter to live with the grandmother to help care for her.  Now, this widow had no source of income and lives on the gifts of friends who visit her.  She was one of a few people who could articulate an actual plan/dream of how to improve the life of her family – Ummu would like to start a business of selling firewood from her courtyard.  As she has slight paralysis problems with her legs and cannot walk well, she cannot have a business which requires her to circulate and sell product (or to travel to purchase her product)… but firewood is delivered by wood trucks to the sellers and those who want firewood also go to the seller to buy.

Meet Fulani Lady 2:

The second Fulani lady that I've been wanting to help is my friend Aissa.  A few years ago, her husband divorced her because she is barren.  Aissa moved back to her family home out in a village along with two children in her care – a younger sister and a cousin or niece.  However, this year, Aissa moved back into the capital so that the older girl could attend school – having reached the higher levels of education not available in the village.

Aissa now lives in a straw hut, squatting on land on the edge of town.  She earns a small amount of income each day by cooking lunch meals to sell to construction workers in the neighbourhood.

Each of these plates contain a meal of rice and beans - which is then topped with: steamed rice couscous; a mixture of leaves, peanut butter, and onions; hot red pepper powder, and a spicy sesame seed powder mix.

It seems like a lot of food to me – but I am sure the guys making bricks and building homes work up a large appetites!!

Aissa dreams of being able to both start a street restaurant to cater to more of the construction workers in the neigbourhood, and to be able to sell food ingredients that are only sold at a market 8 km away.

Hindrances:

For both of these ladies, Ummu without any source of income and Aissa with only enough income to keep her small business of five plate sales a day afloat, neither has no way to save money aside in order to start a micro-enterprise project. 

With the cultural religious holiday only three months away, it was not enough time for a traditional embouche project.  And though habanaaye is a good traditional, and culturally appropriate way to help, the return of investment to bring them help would be one-year away.

Enter …. Project with a Twist:

In what may be a trial run for future possibilities – I decided to combine all three project ideas into helping both of these two ladies.  Last month, I bought each of them three goats: 2 female goats and 1 male goat.

The two female goats are habanaaye … the traditional Fulani method of helping those in need.  These ladies will keep their two female goats for one year, after which they will be returned to me (and I will turn around to give them out to others in need).  The ladies will own and keep all young from these goats – I chose goats because they can reproduce faster than sheep and are easier to feed.

The male goat is part of the embouche project idea … we bought older male goats which the ladies will then sell during the religious holiday.  The purchase of this goat was my gift to them – so all the profit goes to these ladies, with which ….

They start their micro-enterprise projects - without a loan requiring repayment!  During the set-up of these projects, I will be meeting with the ladies to help them think through their plans – the expenses required and potential income.  The first few months or half-a-year, I hope to continue meeting with these ladies to help them as their projects roll-out.

It is written in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.

 In the spirit of this proverb, I hope to stand alongside these two women … so that neither is alone in their attempts, but as a second “in” the labour, I can help them up if they should fall down.