East v. West

Back to the grind. After a month spent traipsing through Kenya with my parents, I'm back on the road with Emily. Before they even managed to land in Toronto, Emily and I were safely esconced in a $20 US a night hotel opposite the bus station in Arusha, Tanzania and had braved the half-hour extend-a-mix of the call to prayer and put up with at least an hour of Swahili television before drowning out both with some tunes from my Mac. We got into Arusha around 3 p.m. and left the next morning around 5.30 a.m. So the early morning curse of Dad lives on.

I should really write more about my experiences with the 'rents in Kenya, but I really need visual aids, so I'll be back to that subject later.

Both the "luxury" "express" buses to Dar es Salaam were booked solid, so we took the chicken run, literally. There were 3,000 day old chicks in the backseats. (I asked.) And behind us were entire families, sandwiched into three or two seats. My kidneys nearly came out my bellybutton from being butted from behind so often. Only one pee break and the journey was, hmm... 11 hours. No worries. We only had one drink. And six samosas each. And two PKs and a Gorilla bubble gum, a granola bar, a Caramilk and some toffees. So hard to be starving in Africa.

So now we're back to backpacker style. We're in a hotel called "Jambo" and have paid through the nose to get over to Zanzibar early tomorrow morning, although we've been warned that everything's booked or the prices are jacked and we may have to camp out on the beach. Bleech. Hopefully the crowd dies down immediately and we're left free to roam.

We both agree that TZ seems a lot more like Africa than Kenya. They sell water in satchets. We've seen men peeing on the side of the road. The buses are milk routes, overcrowded and awful. The woman at the hotel greeted us with: "Oh Dar, it's toooooo hot" to which I replied "Yes, I'm sweating!" just like I would in Ghana. There were boys selling cell phone accessories, biscuits and Fanta from atop their heads at bus stations. We even took a matatu or tro tro (called dalla dallas here) from the bus station, as the out-of-date Lonely Planet had it listed as being in town and we foolishly thought we could walk. (Turns out the new bus station is 11 km from the city centre. Ugh.)

Ghana is way cheaper and sometimes more civilized. Touts came out from every direction yesterday to "help" us buy bus tickets and tried to pry 5,000 Tsh out of my hands this morning for the privilege of putting our bags in the boot. (Ha. Does it look like I was born yesterday? We paid nothing.) There are Pizza Inns here, so Emily's happy. And Mirinda, so I'm happy.

I've decided not to accompany Emily back to Kenya. I'll get to it eventually, but figure since I'm on the East Side of the East Side, I might as well make it worth it, as I'll likely go down the west side of Kenya to Uganda and Rwanda and keep trucking down the west side of TanZAnia when I get there. (TanZAnia, putting to rest the eternal question: is it TanzaKNEEah or Tanzaynia?)

FB Business, Technology
Asian imports gutting African textile trade - The end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement has decimated an industry in the midst of a renaissance, writes Karen Palmer
1517 words
14 December 2005
South China Morning Post

Amid the brilliant riot of colour that makes up Accra's giant Makola Market, one almost has to squint to make out the letters "ATI" on the bolt of folded fabric, a clever imitation of the "ATL" logo of Akosombo Textiles Ltd.

The pattern is distinctly African, block printed in orange and blue, yet its imitation logo is a small but sure sign the material is forged, pirated or smuggled and contributing to what many predict will be the total collapse of the African textile industry.

Almost 12 months after United States textile quotas were abolished, opening up the lucrative American and European markets to cheap Chinese and Indian exports, experts estimate Africa has lost 250,000 textile-related jobs.

They predict thousands more livelihoods will be lost before the market evens out, sparking fears that an industry rich in culture, history and tradition will be wiped out completely in a region of the world that remains desperate for industry and employment.

"I'm worried," Akosombo Textiles sales manager Steve Dutton says. "I'm worried that we'll see a time when there might not be any industry here. We're not seeing any viable ideas for the replacement of these industries."

Ghana once produced 130 million metres of brilliantly coloured fabrics, highly prized in a culture where woven Kente cloth is a symbol of royalty and fabrics figure prominently at baptisms, weddings and funerals.

Now the West African country produces a mere 39 million metres of fabric. An industry that once employed 25,000 people in more than 200 large, medium and small-scale companies now employs only 2,000 in just three large companies.

"So much tradition and history is tied up with our textiles - that is why it matters greatly," says Martina Odonkor, a development consultant who studied Ghana's symbolic Kente cloth as part of a Unesco submission to have the material declared a heritage item.

"Textiles mark a rite of passage here. That sense of importance is being lost. I'm worried about it and sad about the impact it will have on our culture but it's a reflection of our economic reality right now."

African textiles have been hammered by the booming trade in used clothing. Charitable cast-offs have actually pushed many businesses under because they have not been able to compete on price.

Any gains made under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which saw African countries gain duty-free access to American markets, have been obliterated by the onslaught of cheaply made Chinese and Indian imports.

The Agoa, signed in 2000, heralded a renaissance in an African industry flagging under heavy taxation and sluggish technological innovation. Swaziland alone saw dozens of textile factories open as Asian plant owners attempted to take advantage of the mountainous kingdom's access to the US market.

But when the World Trade Organisation's Multi-Fibre Arrangement ended in January this year after 30 years of protective quotas in the US and European markets, the factories folded one by one.

Some 15,000 jobs were lost in Swaziland and another 23,000 jobs disappeared in nearby Lesotho when 23 factories closed. The two countries have been ravaged by Aids and already hover at the bottom of the UN's human development index.

South Africa was also hit hard, losing about 200,000 textile jobs over the past three years. Experts predict that the new trade rules will cost 27 million textile jobs worldwide outside China and India.

A recent meeting on the future of the African textile trade held in Cape Town saw ministers from 10 fabric-producing African countries push for restructuring of the industry so they can remain competitive.

"We would never support any kind of ban on textiles because we know from experience in other countries that bans don't work. All you get is more smuggling," Mr Dutton says. "We understand that people have a right to choice, to buy cheaper stuff."

Mr Dutton just wants to see the playing field levelled.

Ghana is overrun with smuggled fabrics, some careful imitations of copyrighted designs, others shoddy knockoffs of sacred designs once worn only by royalty.

"People started going to China, taking our own designs, made in our own industry and getting them printed very cheaply and putting them into our market," says Julia Anokye, Ghana's deputy minister of industrial promotion.

Theoretically, all imported textiles are supposed to enter the country via the port town of Takoradi, where there are customs agents trained to recognise the quality and value of goods and where a vetting committee waits to determine whether a pattern is an original or a clever rip-off of a Ghanaian design.

The problem is that virtually no-one goes through Takoradi, Mr Dutton says.

Most Asian imports arrive at the free port in Lome, Togo, a mere two hour's drive from the capital Accra. They are stored in a bonded warehouse and then sold to Togolese or Ghanaian traders who grease palms to slip the goods over the border, circumventing import taxes and duties which add up to nearly 35 per cent.

"When goods are smuggled, something is paid on the road but it doesn't go to the government and it's nothing like the proper amount," Mr Dutton says.

"We're not saying they shouldn't bring it in; we're saying they should pay their taxes," Ms Anokye says.

Customs officers have confiscated 31,000 textile items this year and the trade ministry has bought speedboats to chase smugglers.

Ms Anokye says the government is considering offering a tax holiday, as Nigeria does, for materials imported for making prints. There are allowances in the 2006 budget to help with upgrading machinery.

The bigger issue, Mr Dutton says, is copyright piracy. "Obviously it's done with the objective of deceiving the consumer," he said. "When you're looking at a symbol and it looks like the one we're using, they will be fooled."

Few people will pay more for seemingly identical items.

"Ghanaians have developed a bad habit - they want everything cheap," Ms Anokye says.

"They know the impact, they know the adverse effect it's having on industry but the Ghanaian taste for imported goods and the taste for western style is giving us a headache," she says. "They like suits. You see them in jeans."

Ghana has instituted an African Dress Friday policy, encouraging people to wear Ghanaian fabrics in local styles at least once a week.

"Ostensibly, it looks like the consumer is getting a good deal but there are all kinds of implications if there are no local industries," Mr Dutton says.

Consumers are not getting nearly the savings they should be, he added, since the smugglers take a cut and the women selling the fabrics earn a huge mark-up.

"They can make more money on that than they can trading the local stuff," he says. "That's the engine that drives this thing along."

The idea a developing country should be able to make textiles as cheaply as a country like India or China is a myth, Mr Dutton says.

Workers demand higher wages (South Africans earn two to three times what seamstresses and tailors are paid in China and Malaysia), their precision and quality cannot compare with Asian workers, things like electricity cost more and everything from dye to the base grey fabric has to be imported.

"As far as I'm concerned, what [the Chinese] produce is rubbish," Mr Anokye says. "Even if they sold the Chinese fabric for a penny, I wouldn't buy it. The quality is not good and the designs are not original, and because of the impact it's having on our society and industry, I wouldn't buy it."

Europe and the US have struck trading agreements with Beijing that place caps on the amount of merchandise that can be brought into various countries but Mr Dutton knows that kind of agreement would not work in Ghana, even if the country were a strong enough trading partner to demand it.

There is simply too much corruption, too much room for smuggling and too many underpaid border guards willing to look the other way if it means having a little something extra to feed their families, he says.

A unified front presented by the Economic Community Of West African States, a regional organisation of 16 countries founded in 1975, on duties and taxes might help stem some of the cross-border smuggling, Mr Dutton says.

"I'm not sure what the answer is," he says. "All we can do is try to fight on the copyright issue, on brand and design and quality.

"Things change and we have to accept that, but as things change, you have to have opportunities coming up and we're not seeing that.

"I wonder what people will be doing in 10 years."

Grasscutter: The other white meat

Reading the Graphic back in my JHR glory days when I come across a story that’s so fundamentally interesting, I have carried a clipping of it ever since. I carry an electronic copy of it on my computer, just waiting for the day I will do this story.

A woman has won farmer of the year. She is 75-year-old Madam Efua Frimpongmaa. That is all I know about her. I have no idea what she did to deserve farmer of the year. I don’t even know what she farms. She lives in some place called Agona Nkum in the Central Region and I am determined to find her.

Normally I would just go to the tro-tro station and say “Agona Nkum” when the mates ask me “Ou qu’hen?” But I have done a little footwork on this one and the average Ghanaian has never heard of this village. I will need to get serious.

So down to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the acronym of which Emily uses as a cussword. “You’re such a MOFA.” It’s perfect.

No one is quite certain where Madam farmer of the year is, they feel I should take a tro-tro to Agona Swedru and it will all come together from there. (Agona Swedru is where I go to visit my Ghanaian host family, whom I have not visited, even though I am dying to know if Grace made it through the birth of her seventh child.) I do have the option of going to the farmer of this year ceremony, up in Navrongo, which Madam Frimpongmaa should be attending in order to pass on the sword. (Literally.) Navrongo is the last town with a gas station in Ghana before one crosses into Burkina Faso. I’m not that eager.

I’m distracted anyway. Crossing the street on my way to the MOFA building, I notice a big bedsheet banner. Grasscutter Promotion Days. Dec. 12-16. Pre-registration required.

Sign me up.

I first read about the grasscutter one night in Chapters on John & Richmond, after learning I was coming to Ghana but before I felt willing to part with $40 to buy a guidebook. Under the “food” section, the kind people at Lonely Planet had spelled out that grasscutter was a local delicacy, a bushmeat most likely served in soup with fufu but also frequently served smoked.

A grasscutter looks like the product of a drunken encounter between a beaver and a large rat. They have coarse, dark fur, rather thoughtful brown eyes, soft pink noses, talon-like claws. And a big rat tail.

They’re the second largest rodent on the continent, behind the porcupine. And apparently they’re so tasty that Ghanaians eat the contents of their intestinal tract as flavouring for soup, even though grasscutters eat their own poop. (The accountant at a grasscutter co-op explained to me that their diet is so clean, their poop is actually like an energy drink, loaded with vitamin B12 and niacin. I have no doubt it resembles most of the stuff on offer at those freaky health nut juice places.)

Ghanaians are so nutty for grasscutter, taxi drivers have been known to be overcome by carnivorous zeal when one cuts across their path, swerving to hit the main course of a special meal. Boys sell them stretched out and smoked along the roadside. Apparently they sell for upwards of $30.

As their name suggests, they eat grass. And they hide there too. So most hunters, lacking anything resembling skill, simply wait until the dry season, then set the grass ablaze, smoking the grasscutters out of their natural habitat and onto their plates. The byproduct is an eye-watering, asthma-inducing haze, on top of the grit-in-your-eye, dried-out-nose, chapped-lip effect of the Harmattan. Dozens of other animals are smoked out as well and many trees are left charred and dead. The worst is that there’s no way to prevent the fires from spreading to farmers’ fields.

So, a clever idea emerges in the 1960s. Why not just trap the grasscutters, put ‘em in a cage and watch them go at it like rabbits? Then there will be grasscutter for everyone!

The problem is that these animals, unlike their vicious, sewer dwelling cousins, are so sensitive that few made it through the bumpy journey to their newly-built cages. They were so stressed they died. Those that did make it were often so beside themselves at the turn in their fortunes that they gave up eating and died.

The early years were ugly and the idea of domesticating grasscutters in Ghana quietly went away.

But the Beninoise kept at it, producing a breeding stock that could handle long, bumpy rides and chew happily once esconced in their cages. They’ll chew through anything, these grasscutters, because, as grasscutter farmer Atta Yeboah told me, “Every second of every day, a grasscutter’s teeth are growing. They have to grind them down or they’ll die. You have to give them some wood or a broken post. If you don’t do that, they’ll chew their cage.” Then they’ll chew through their feeding dishes. That’s $110 down the drain. So now the farmers toss in oyster shells and bones.

They’ll also toss in guinea grass or elephant grass, the stuff not found on golf courses. And cassava chips, maize, wheat or rice chaff.

I just had to meet a grasscutter in person, so Olivier, the JHR photographer, came out with me to a farm on the outskirts of Accra. Now, don’t go picturing rolling green hills or anything. This was in a residential neighbourhood, down a road that seemed more like a dried up river bed, studded with rocks and ruts.

Mr. Ocansey got into grasscutters about 10 years ago. He used to raise sheep and goats, but he was constantly plagued by theft. Then one morning he woke up and someone had stolen each and every one of his animals and he knew that was the end of his goat and sheep days.

He bought three grasscutters, two females and a male and a year later he had 12 new grasscutters. By the next year he had 20 new grasscutters. Now he keeps 200 grasscutters in a concrete block “barn” no bigger than most people’s kitchens.

It was feeding time when we arrived and, frankly, the grasscutter scurries just like a rat, even if its got more bulk, which freaked me out a bit, but I still managed to give one a small pet on the belly, just to see if Grasscutter Coats would be turning up in Jay-Z videos in the near future. By the time all the stalks of elephant grass had been folded up and placed inside the small cages, I was sneezing and the grasscutters were producing a chorus of “ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch” chewing noises.

I asked if Mr. Ocansey does anything special to get his grasscutters to grow. He thought I was joking, so I told him about how some dairy farmers play classical music for their cattle so they’ll produce sweet, more consistent milk. He slapped his knee and laughed, then asked if I brought a CD. I told him I wished I had some Celine Dion. Then we both agreed they might like hip life better and he did his imitation of a grasscutter dancing, top teeth ferreting out over his bottom lip. Hilarity ensued.

Mr. Ocansey wants to see grasscutter go big time, as do the good folks behind the Grasscutter Promotion Days. They know there’s a huge market in West Africa and an untapped market in the European cities where a lot of West African live, like London or Paris, where the few grasscutters available are smuggled in. The bushmeat trade is estimated to be worth $50 million US, including more than 30,000 tonnes of grasscutter meat. (The average grasscutter weighs 4 kg.) There’s never enough to go around.

Grasscutter, according to Ruth Yeboah at MOFA, is “a most interesting animal. Almost everything about it is interesting.” When she says “interesting” she means exploitable. The meat can be boiled in soup, roasted, grilled as kebabs, smoked or dried like jerky. The coat could be used, although no one is too sure as what, since it feels closer to porcupine than chinchilla. The skin is being used as flavouring in MSG cubes. Even the intestinal juices, as previously mentioned.

Mr. Ocansey already puts grasscutter meat in pies. Now he wants to see it canned. You know, like tuna or corned beef. When my eyes bug out and I ask, “Do you think people will really buy grasscutter in a can?” the accountant answers: “People aren’t ashamed to buy corned beef in a can, are they? And that’s not even a delicacy.”

All they need is an abattoir and a processing plant.

One farmer told us he was a retired service man who got into grasscutter rearing after seeing a documentary on it on Ghanaian television (you kinda have to see Ghanaian television to believe it). He was the kind of man that makes me really miss my grandfathers. I was holding a mango in my hand during the ride to his house – I found it on the front seat of his car – and when Olivier asked where it had come from, I said “Oh, it’s a grasscutter egg.” The old man just laughed and laughed, like it was a story that would be told for days down at the Ghanaian equivalent of the coffee shop. Then he gave me the mango.

When we arrived at his farm to take some pictures, he brought out some biscuits, playing with his 42 grasscutters as he fed them a little snack. (One escaped after Olivier asked him to hold it out by its tail.) He even showed us baby rabbits born three days prior.

At the end, when we drove back to the main road, I asked him if he eats a lot of grasscutter. Oh no, he said. He’s waiting until he has enough grasscutters that a new litter is born every day, about 200 in total. Then he would allow himself one grasscutter a week and sell the rest.

But, he said in a universal truth: it’s so hard to kill them after you’ve played with them.

News
Farmers in Ghana grab opportunity by the tail; Hoping to export a tasty giant rodent Grasscutter prized for its gamey flavour
Karen Palmer
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
1071 words
10 January 2006
The Toronto Star
A15

ACCRA, Ghana -- In the hands of marketers, pig became the other white meat, Tuesdays were reserved for turkey and buffalo found its way onto the plates of the cholesterol conscious.

Now West Africans are hoping to perform the same kind of image makeover on the grasscutter, a delicacy prized for its gamey flavour, so coveted by connoisseurs that boys selling them stretched out and smoked by the roadside fetch upwards of $30 per animal.

The makeover could be the key to bigger profits, similar to Australian marketers' hopes that "australus" will prove a big seller on menus down under - that's the winning name chosen last month after a magazine contest to rebaptize kangaroo meat.

Grasscutter, to the uninitiated, looks like what would result from a drunken encounter between a beaver and a big rat, with coarse, dark hair, a soft pink nose, rather thoughtful brown eyes and a big rat tail.

It is, to be frank, a giant rodent.

Ghanaian farmers, however, see it as a cash cow.

"This is not rat," explains Emmanuel Asamoah, an executive at the Ablekuma Grasscutter Association, a co-operative of about 200 farmers operating on the edge of the capital, Accra.

He stands surrounded by dozens of wooden cages, each containing at least one grasscutter, some with litters. It's feeding time, when dozens of stalks of elephant grass are folded up and pushed through the cages. Asamoah is accompanied by a chorus of "ch-ch-ch-ch" as the grasscutters munch.

"This is a very different animal all together. The hair of the rat is not like this. This animal eats only grass. It doesn't eat dirty things. It's not like a rat at all. This animal is very clean, it doesn't smell," he says.

"It's delicious," echoes farmer Atta Yeboah. "The taste depends on the way you cook it, but if you have antelope or chicken, people would pick grasscutter over all that."

So far, the fledgling grasscutter farming industry - prominent in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Benin, as well as Ghana - is mostly ad hoc, lacking the slaughterhouses, processing plants and creative advertising campaigns that have worked wonders for other exotic sources of protein.

But this month, Accra plays host to an international conference designed to flesh out ways to capitalize on a seemingly insatiable hunger for grasscutter meat.

Bush meat garners some $58 million each year through the buying and selling of some 384,000 tonnes of meat. Grasscutter is thought to represent about 30 per cent of that.

Farmers want to boost the breeding stock, trade rearing techniques and sell the tasty critters across the diaspora, not only in open-air markets in the West African sub region, but in grocery stores in places like London and Toronto, where larges numbers of expatriate Africans live.

Farmers also envision the day when grasscutters are sold in meat pies, are even available on grocers' shelves, sandwiched between the canned tuna and corned beef.

Unlike their sewer-running cousins - aggressive disease-ridden fighters who are a symbol of filth - grasscutters can be so sensitive that the most common cause of death amongst caged 'cutters is stress.

Some are so beside themselves at being caged, they simply give up eating and starve to death.

They're the second largest rodent on the continent, behind the porcupine and, as their name suggests, they eat grass. They hide there too, so most hunters simply wait until the dry season, set the grass ablaze and smoke out the grasscutters.

The by-product is an eye-watering, asthma-inducing haze. Dozens of other animals are killed and many trees are left charred and dead. There's no way to prevent the fires from spreading to farmers' fields, says Atta Yeboah.

"When they set those fires, that destroys the environment."

The start-up costs are so far the greatest hindrance to the spread of grasscutter farming amongst West African farmers. They need to build cages that can cost upwards of $120, and buy supplemental foods, like cassava chips and maize, which can be costly for farmers who usually live hand-to-mouth.

Each breeding grasscutter usually costs around 400,000 cedis, about $52.

But the payoffs are quick, says Ruth Yeboah, an official at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, since grasscutters gestate for only five months and produce an average litter of five.

The sale of even one healthy, 4-kg grasscutter is often enough to pay a child's school fees.

"Grasscutter is a most interesting animal. Almost everything about it is interesting," she says, meaning almost everything about it is exploitable.

The meat can be roasted, boiled in soup, grilled as kebabs, smoked or dried like jerky.

The skin is being explored as flavouring in monosodium glutamate cubes.

The coat could be used, although no one is too sure as what, since it feels closer to porcupine than chinchilla.

Ghanaians also eat the contents of the grasscutter's intestinal tract as flavouring for soup, even though grasscutters eat their own feces. (The animal's diet is so clean, explains one farmer, that their poop is actually like an energy drink, loaded with vitamin B12 and niacin.)

Farmers feed their furry livestock guinea or elephant grass, as well as cassava chips, maize, wheat or rice chaff. They'll often toss in some bones or some oyster shells as well.

"Every second of every day, a grasscutter's teeth are growing. They have to grind them down or they'll get sick and die," says Atta Yeboah. "You have to give them some wood or a broken post. If you don't do that, they'll chew their cage."

Unlike their more familiar cousins, they also demand a clean habitat.

"If you are lazy, don't go into grasscutters," warns farmer Atta Yeboah. "The more you leave the environment dirty, the more harm you will cause."

| Olivier Asselin for the toronto star Farmer Olivier Teye Ocansey hauls a grasscutter out of its cage at a farm near Accra, Ghana. Ghanaian farmers hope the giant rodent, a delicacy prized for its gamey flavour, will turn into their cash cow, and are looking for ways to capitalize on the seemingly insatiable hunger for grasscutter meat.

Gin & Logic

Spent Friday “out in the field,” as we glamorous foreign corro types say, learning first-hand about the difference between Canadians and Africans.

There is an old and actually not-so-funny joke that perfectly sums up Canadians:

“How do you get 50 Canadians out of a pool?”
“Get out of the pool, please.”

We will do virtually anything we’re told, usually without question. We’re the most accommodating of people, the type who don’t want to offend, don’t want to cause trouble or create a ruckus. We’re meek, quiet, more likely to speak our minds through sarcasm than blunt truth. We’ll put up with the worst, make do rather than make a fuss. There is little we do without quiet reflection and if we’re going to argue, it’s more likely to take the form of polite debate.

Africans, on the other hand…

It’s the frequent topic of conversation amongst weather-beaten NGO workers, who arrive with the best of intentions, shiny with their expectations and promise, laden with answers and solutions. For the most part, they promptly find themselves beaten down by a logic that is really not comprehensible for Western minds. Then, sufficiently soused with gin and tonics, weary from round-and-round conversations that involve solving the world’s woes, they roll this particular African logic around in their brains, trying to make sense of what happened to their perfect solutions, their easy answers, their reinvention of the wheel.

These conversations invariably begin with: “What they should do is…”

If only it were that simple.

Think of the problems that plague Africa. The plagues, for instance. Immunization. Education. Poverty. All have undoubtedly been solved on paper a million times over, even in conversations that get rather cloudy as the night wears on and the booze runs dry. The questions that are asked with a shake of the head: why won’t people get polio vaccines? Why won’t men wear condoms? Why don’t microcredit loans work? How do African women bear to get up in the morning? Why are their husbands such lazy louts? Why do people put up with ineffective dictators? Why doesn’t anyone stand up to corruption?

Why, for example, does Ghana still not produce iodized salt, almost a century after scientists first discovered not only the impacts of iodine deficiency – mental retardation, serious birth defects, stillbirth, miscarriage, lowered IQs, stunted growth, decreased productivity – but that the easiest way to get it is by sprinkling potassium iodate on salt in a processing that actually improves the product?

Why, not only in the face of the all the medical evidence, but after study upon study has shown that Ghana is losing millions in export potential by not iodizing its salt? Why can it not get its act together?

The answer is complex. And frustrating. And uniquely African.

So break out the gin.

The day begins at 9.30 a.m., but doesn’t really get underway until about 10 a.m. This is African time and Rebecca, the Unicef Salt Iodization Officer, did tell me “We’ll get going by 10 a.m. at the latest,” which is a rather strange way of answering what time she’d like me to show up. We drive through Accra’s dirty, crowded streets, so plugged with traffic it takes more than an hour just to make it to the outreaches of the city and we nearly plow into the side/back/front of at least three cars. (We are in a Land Rover, this being Unicef, and I know that in Africa nothing ever happens to the indestructible NGOmobile and have signed a waiver saying that I will not sue if maimed or otherwise injured. My brother, however, will take Unicef for all its worth.)

We wind our way to Nyanyano, where Deg Heyward-Mills is at this moment turning water into wine under a circus tent pitched up in a field, as part of his “Jesus Healing Crusade.” I would really like to be in that tent, maybe acting as the Water-Into-Wine Verification Officer, but instead I’m sitting on a lawnchair outside of the Nyanyano salt producers co-op office, a shed of a building where three or four members are telling Rebecca that their problem is that they don’t know the calibration of the backpack sprayers and they would like some more potassium iodate for free and they would also like her to do more marketing for them.

She is a food technician, a young little thing who takes no guff from anybody. I like her immediately. She’s got one of those senses of humour, where everything she says is deadpan, but everyone around her is laughing. Except me, as she’s speaking for the most part in Fanti and I can’t understand her.

We go on a tour of the salt ponds, the dozens and dozens, hundreds upon hundreds of 3-inch concrete pools filled with water pumped up from the nearby lagoon. I instantly regret wearing a skirt, but laundry has limited my options. Rebecca chuffs at the sight of all of these ponds. She explains, patiently and with humour, that if only the co-op would convince its members to get along, to raze their operation and start over, co-operatively, with wider, deeper ponds, they could get three times the salt with half the effort. (SEE STORY BELOW)

The men just shake their heads and smile. No one here gets along. There are land ownership issues, long standing feuds, inheritance issues that remain unresolved. No one will ever agree to that.

But the pumping, Rebecca says. That just adds to the farmer’s costs. The men shake their heads again. They know all this. They’re not stupid. They’ve been pulling salt from their ponds for a long, long time. The chairman is their shining example and they hope through him they’ll be able to convince their membership. He has massive ponds, twice the size of the ones around him, and they’re deeper than the others. He pumps, but less often. And he gets three times the yield.

Still, the men shake their heads. It will be a long, long time before anyone admits to seeing the wisdom of the chairman’s ways and follows in his footsteps.

When we get to what turns out to the halfway point, I ask the question that’s lingering over this tour: How many of these producers iodate their salt?

Again with the head shaking. The farmers think it’s too expensive, the men say. They don’t understand the benefits. They don’t see the damage that iodine deficiency causes. (That’s because they eat a lot of shellfish, which haz natural iodine, Rebecca tells me, and its unlikely anyone in this village would know a goiter if it walked up and nodded at them like a second head). They don’t care that it’s law. They don’t want to pay for potassium iodate and no one is going to make them.

They need more education, the men say. Rebecca merely looks away. She knows they could educate them until they hold a PhD in potassium iodate; it doesn’t make the chemical any cheaper, nor does it change the fact that salt has produced this way for hundreds of years, nor does it refute the argument that “our forefathers” ate non-iodized salt and they lived to be 83. On average.

The men treat us to lunch. Rebecca tries again to understand why this co-op isn’t acting co-operatively. There’s more talk about the cost of the potassium iodate. It’s six million cedis for a huge drum. That’s about $800, which is serious coin. But this is a coop with more than 200 members and it only takes a teaspoon to iodate 10 kg of salt. That huge drum will iodize 300,000 kilos of salt. (Enough for a bad Winnipeg winter, I’m willing to bet.)

We drive to the Kasoa market, where the market ladies have been waging a war with the road repairmen for more than a year. The roads are being upgraded and in preparation for the construction of wider, smoother lanes, a brand new market was built on the edge of town, with smooth concrete floors, tin roofs, even shelves inside each stall. The thing sprawls on and on, and women sell everything from pigs feet to garden eggs to lacy underwear, tiny bunches of indigo dye, hair extensions, hair baubles and sachets of salt.

The women used to sell right next to the road, their pineapples and plastic sandals occasionally spilling over onto the street. So the enforcement people come and kick them out, tell them to go to the new market or they’ll be squished under the Caterpillar trucks. And every day the market ladies go out, the same as always, shouting and gesturing and tossing their big stomachs and floppy breasts around, screaming themselves hoarse, until the construction men just back off, go home, try again the next day.

Anyway. At the Kasoa market, Rebecca and I walk to what feels like the very back, but is probably only the middle of the market and she takes out of her purse three droppers of chemicals and a little silver pick. She sidles up to the first woman, explains what she’s doing, then gouges into one of her big 50 kg bags of salt with the pick, extracts some salt and douses it with chemicals. It should turn deep violet, but nothing happens. After six bags, Rebecca gives up. None of these women are selling iodized salt.

They tell her the producers make them buy the potassium iodate and only then will they sprinkle it onto their product. These ladies, who are all sweetness and smiles to Rebecca, are actually cunning, ruthless, conniving foxes. You should never mess with a market lady, because she will get you. They’re so much smarter than anyone else and they’re devious too. But they look like angels and it’s hard to stay mad. They are buying all their salt on credit, taking weeks to pay off their debts, starving the farmers and contributing to their inability to pay for the potassium iodate. It’s all a game and, so far, the market ladies are winning because they know it’s the producers’ responsibility to iodate the salt.

We drive back toward the city and stop at the police barrier. There are few cars that pull over willingly at a police barrier, but Unicef handed out 58 test kits so that the officers could test salt being distributed across the country to ensure that it had been properly iodized. There is a law – has been for nearly a decade – that says no one can sell iodized salt. It’s punishable by a year in prison or a 5 million cedi fine. (The government-owned salt factory, however, only began iodizing its salt a year ago and it uses such an antiquated process no one believes that the salt is being “properly” iodized.)

So here are police that are always hungry for handouts, that are so audacious in their corruption that they will actually say to drivers dumb enough to roll down their windows “Do you think it’s possible?” and wait for the customary bribe. They come up with spurious accusations (“Your child is under the age of 10 and cannot ride in the front seat”) and ridiculous allegations (“One of your headlights is too bright”) all in an effort to skim a little from the hapless driver.

So here is a chance – a legitimate one at that – to catch people doing something that’s actually illegal. But when Rebecca gets out of the Land Rover, obruni in tow, the inspector looks at her blankly. He has no idea what she’s talking about. Headquarters has not told them to do this, he tells her, so they can’t do it until headquarters says they should.

(While we are having this conversation, I watch one young cadet palm bribes from three different tro-tros. I feel like asking, “Are we in Nigeria?” but figure my Canadian sarcasm will not be appreciated.)

I tell Rebecca I would like to see some of the market ladies arrested. She agrees, but I really mean it. I’d like to be there when someone puts cuffs on one of those big, loud ladies and hauls them back to the ridiculously tiny blue Citroens the police drive here. (I have been overcharged for tomatoes one time too many.) But arresting these ladies is the easiest way to make sure the iodization process is actually followed. They’ll demand it. The producers won’t be able to squirm away from it. No one beats a market lady.

We have one more stop to make, at Mina Chemicals, where the president is a very proud Lion and a smart, articulate man to boot. Rebecca wants to know what he’s selling his potassium iodate for and is actually there to make the case that he should be getting a tax exemption. He regards her with suspicion, largely because he sees Unicef as a competitor in the chemical provision business, as they sometimes give out the iodate for free in an effort to entice producers to actually use it. It comes out that the Lion is paying nearly 25 per cent in taxes (ouch!) and he’s happily passing that on to customers. A tax break would be very welcome. He even invites Rebecca to join the Lions.

It has been a long day and my head is actually starting to hurt from what I’ve seen. Excuses everywhere. Ignorance. A blatant disregard for the greater good. A stubbornness that seems to border on the supernatural. And of course, the ubiquitous poverty that is frankly so ubiquitous one becomes inured to it.

Mr. Lion sums up the whole situation perfectly. “People will only do what you inspect, not what you expect.”

Ain’t that the truth.

News
Producers prodded to iodize their salt; ignoring RISK Ghanaians loath to add 'medicine' that would be good for health and economy.
Karen Palmer
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
1126 words
12 March 2006
The Toronto Star
A14

Rebecca Ahun dumps the damp mound of salt on to the dirt floor of the bustling outdoor Kasoa market, amid the dried fish and reeking pigs' trotters, exasperated by the faint blue hue of the crystals.

"That's not enough," she says in English before delivering a short lecture in the local Fanti language on the importance of selling salt fortified with iodine.

Ahun had been hoping to see the salt take on a deep violet tone when doused with testing chemicals.

But not one of the six 50-kilogram bags tested has been rinsed in potassium iodate.

Iodine has been added to table salt in most parts of the world since the early 1920s, but Ghana is still struggling to convince producers and consumers alike of the importance of iodized salt.

Despite an intense education campaign by UNICEF, funding and studies by the Ottawa-based Micronutrient Initiative and the special support of Ghana's president, iodized-salt consumption rates are actually declining, leading to more incidents of goiter, mental retardation and stillbirths.

The medical evidence is clear and studies show the country's non-iodized salt is costing millions in export potential, yet Ghana has no chance of reaching its goal of 90 per cent iodization.

As anyone who's ever preached the virtues of safe sex or the value of polio vaccinations can attest, nothing is ever as simple as it seems on a continent where communication is poor, education is low, poverty is rampant, enforcement is weak and stubbornness trumps most reasonable arguments.

"We have a lot of work to do," Ahun sighs.

Salt is one of the Earth's most basic substances, a crystal ionic bond found in both deserts and oceans. Its essence has flavoured foods since prehistoric times and its trade routes shaped the geopolitical landscape of the planet.

In the 1920s, iodized table salt was introduced to ward off thyroid diseases and other maladies caused by iodine deficiencies in the diets of people who weren't getting the recommended 225-microgram daily dosage naturally from sea salt or seafood.

In most countries, laws were enacted requiring table-salt manufacturers to add iodine and consumers demanded that it be supplied at no additional cost.

"Most everyone takes iodized salt without even realizing it," says Ahun, a biochemistry food technician who inspects salt for UNICEF, thanks to a grant from the Micronutrient Initiative.

Studies have shown that iodine-deficient children are less productive, have less energy, can have stunted growth and often have IQ scores 10 to 15 per cent lower than children who get the recommended dosage.

Women who don't get enough iodine have also been shown to be more prone to miscarriages and stillbirths, and they are more likely to deliver mentally challenged children.

About 70 per cent of table salt consumed in West Africa is iodized, but that's skewed by the figures for the most-populous nation, Nigeria, where consumption rates hover at better than 95 per cent, largely because it imports virtually all its salt from Brazil.

In Ghana, by contrast, consumption rates have dipped in the last two years to 44 per cent.

About 70 per cent of the table salt produced in Ghana is exported to nearby countries - including Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and Ivory Coast - making its lack of iodine an issue for the region as a whole.

At a meeting two years ago in Senegal, the region's other major salt-producing country, researchers presented surveys showing that West Africans know the value of using iodized salt but still aren't using it.

"There's a missing link somewhere and people were pointing to the supply," Ahun says.

"The availability just isn't there."

A 2003 market survey found that less than 20 per cent of the salt available in the country had been iodized, although selling non-iodized salt has been punishable by up to a year in prison or a $700 fine for nearly a decade.

The problem, Ahun says, is monitoring the thousands of artisanal producers who ring the coastline, harvesting a bag or two at a time but adding up to a major part of the market.

At the salt ponds of Nyanyano, more than 200 salt farmers use pumps to fill concrete ponds with the local water, which bubbles up so salty it's undrinkable and takes only five days to produce frost-like patterns of harvestable salt.

Harry Quartey, secretary of the village's salt producers' co-operative, shakes his head when asked if everyone in the co-op sprays their salt with iodine before selling it in 50-kilogram bags to market vendors.

"They think it is some form of medicine, medicine, medicine, so they are always trying to avoid medicine," Quartey says.

Each year, UNICEF says, 120,000 Ghanaian children are born with some kind of mental retardation as a direct consequence of their mothers' iodine deficiency and about 15,600 are so severely disabled they require medical support.

A 1998 survey found a 68 per cent prevalence rate for goiter in children and women in the northeastern region of Ghana.

UNICEF research also suggests Ghana loses $22 million in worker productivity to iodine deficiency every year and estimates that $1.2 billion in wages will be lost in the next nine years.

UNICEF officer Tamar Schroeder also argues that adding iodine makes the table salt more exportable, not only because most countries demand it, but also because the extra refining improves the quality of the salt.

"It's not only important for Ghana for health, but it could be big business in Ghana - and that's why it's so important," she says.

Experts say the problem is easily solved, as Guinea proved in 1993, when a crackdown brought consumption rates up from zero to 68 per cent, while goiter rates dropped from 64 to 27 per cent.

However, when Ahun stops at a police checkpoint to see whether the officers are using UNICEF-supplied test kits to determine if bags of salt moving through the area contain iodine, the inspector stares at her blankly. He has no idea what she's talking about.

"We have a lot of work to do," she sighs again.