Balancing the Budget

The Peace Corps is a volunteer assignment, but the Government does pay volunteers a monthly living allowance while in country.  Note that this is not a lot of money.  I think the monthly allowance varies by country and has also gone up with inflation, but in Ghana in 1993 the Peace Corps was paying each volunteer the equivalent of $150 per month.  This was supposed to cover all living expenses!  And I was not paid any additional money by my school, since I was, you know, a volunteer, so $150/month was all I got.  $150 doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but in fact it was enough; I was actually able to save money while I was living in my small town, because daily living expenses were not much, and quite frankly there was very little to spend my money on within the confines of my village, Boso. 

Of course my monthly allowance was not paid out in American dollars, but in Ghanaian cidis.  If I recall correctly, I used to go down to the capital Accra to collect my allowance on a semi-regular basis.  I think for other volunteers who lived farther away, their allowances were delivered to them periodically by Peace Corps staff.  Boso was about a 3 hour bus ride from the capital, and I was always going down there for medical treatment anyway since I was always getting sick, or injured, or both, so I just took care of payday myself. 

I collected my monthly allowance in cash, about 100,000 cidis at a time, in 500 and 200 cidi denominations.  Quite the fistful of cash when paid out!  It was a little uncomfortable having that much cash on hand so I opened a bank account in Peki, which was the closest town to Boso (my town) that had a bank.  Peki was about a one hour bus and taxi ride or a one hour bike ride from Boso.  Didn’t matter if I took the bus or rode myself, the trip was about the same!  There was a nifty shortcut one could take on the bike, an old disused road through the forest that was too rutted-out for cars but still passable by brave cyclists. 

Also Peki was the home of fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Cindy D_, who was the closest Peace Corps volunteer to me, and closest non-Ghanaian to me in general.  And Peki was also for a short period of time the home of Donna G_; she was just finishing her service as I was starting mine.  Donna now coincidentally lives in the same town as I back here in the states, and I went to High School with Donna’s daughter Jodi.  Small world, indeed. 

 

So after getting paid I would deposit some of my monthly money at the bank in Peki and keep the rest with me.  I never had a problem with pickpockets or anybody stealing my money from my house, which was something I was warned about over and over before coming to Ghana.  Maybe the larger cities had more of a problem, but I was out in the sticks and people were generally pretty nice and law-abiding.  I had a travel wallet with wads-o-cash in it, just sitting there on my table in plain view.  A lot of cash, in retrospect!  A lot of cidis.

The cidi is the currency used in Ghana.  At the time of my service, or at least when my service started in 1993, the exchange rate was about 700 cidis to 1 dollar.  By the time I left the dollar had gotten stronger, or the cidi weaker, or both, so the exchange rate had climbed to about 1000 cidis to 1 dollar.  So what was a $150 per month allowance became a $100 per month allowance by the time I ended my service.  But the purchasing power of my cidis remained about the same with the exception of transportation costs, which seemed to go up at the same pace as the exchange rate went down.  At the time Ghana imported most if not all of its oil and gas from other countries, Nigeria and Gabon I would expect, so they were at the mercy of market oil prices as we all are to an extent.  I understand now that Ghana has discovered some fairly significant off-shore oil fields so that may change things quite a bit, but “back in the day” fuel costs were relatively high, and it was expensive to travel around.  But other than transportation it was very inexpensive to live in my little town, and I thought I could actually save money while living there.

About a month into my teaching assignment I decided to keep a daily log of expenses. I think then I was using it as a tool to help me budget for a trip I was planning through West Africa.  I wanted to travel to the Sahara and see Mali, and Burkina Faso, and some of the even more exotic places near to me – because Ghana wasn’t exotic enough, I suppose!  I figured, and correctly so, that this would be my best chance to see the fabled ancient salt caravan town of Timbuktu (apparently not that exciting), the Great Mosque of Djenné (apparently just exciting enough), and maybe even the seldom-seen Aïr Mountains of Niger (apparently far too exciting).  Living in my village was cheap, but travel was expensive.  cidis.

So $150 per month breaks down to a little over $35 per week.  I made it a goal to spend the equivalent of less than $10 per week, thus saving about $100 per month.  I probably shouldn’t be posting this information!  If the Peace Corps knew they could spend only $50 per week on me, than they might re-think the allowances!

So here it is in all its glory, 5 weeks of painstakingly annotated fiduciary goodness.  Who says feds can’t come in under budget?

 

Day	Date 1993		cidis	dollars*	notes
Sun	10/24		0
Mon	10/25		200	$0.20	200 cidis got me two loaves of tea bread, bananas, oranges, and peanuts
Tue	10/26		0
Wed	10/27		0
Thu	10/28		100	$0.10	Food. "caliaco"?  That’s what my journal says.  Caliaco.
Fri	10/29		7300	$7.30	3000 cidis to Africa my housekeeper, 4300 in Accra (bought a mirror!)
Sat	10/30		0
Sun	10/31		0
Mon	11/1		220	$0.22	food -- likely bananas, oranges, fried yams
Tue	11/2		4140	$4.14	3500 on kitchen utensils, 500 for a school fundraiser, 140 on food
Wed	11/3		290	$0.29	230 on food, 60 on oranges (not considered food?)
Thu	11/4		1970	$1.97	1700 on stamps, 270 on food and matches
Fri	11/5		200	$0.20	food
Sat	11/6		180	$0.18	food!
Sun	11/7		400	$0.40	food?
Mon	11/8		200	$0.20	food…
Tue	11/9		4075	$4.08	4000 on a food cabinet (should've seen that coming), 75 on food
Wed	11/10		70	$0.07	and food
Thu	11/11		160	$0.16	food!
Fri	11/12		3160	$3.16	3000 to Africa, 160 on food
Sat	11/13		0
Sun	11/14		2500	$2.50	2500 -- Volunteer Advisory Council meeting in Peki.  Beer?
Mon	11/15		200	$0.20	food.  Bananas, oranges, peanuts, fried yams, tea bread if available, repeat
Tue	11/16		100	$0.10	food
Wed	11/17		170	$0.17	food
Thu	11/18		60	$0.06	food
Fri	11/19		190	$0.19	food
Sat	11/20		6220	$6.22	foooooood.  Bike trip to Kpandu
Sun	11/21		50	$0.05	food
Mon	11/22		300	$0.30	food
Tue	11/23		0
Wed	11/24		2800	$2.80	2400 on stamps, 400 food
Thu	11/25		50	$0.05	food.  Bike trip to Nancy's site for Thanksgiving
Fri	11/26		2000	$2.00	food
Sat	11/27		3100	$3.10	3000 to Africa, 100 on food.  Bike accident.  Beginning of the end...
By week:
Week 1			7600	$7.60
Week 2			7000	$7.00
Week 3			8065	$8.07
Week 4			9440	$9.44
Week 5			8300	$8.30
Total			40405	$40.41	Wow.  That number really astounds me. $40 for 5 weeks, and it could have been less even.
By category:
Food			12965	$12.97	13 dollars for 5 weeks of food.
Africa			9000	$9.00	Africa usually brought me dinner so some of this is food as well
Stamps			4100	$4.10	I was writing a lot of letters
Other stuff			14340	$14.34	Basically stuff to eat food with and store food...

* I used an exchange rate of 1000 cidis per dollar

I think in retrospect I could have spent a bit more money, I was living perhaps a bit too frugally.  I wanted to try to fit in though, and not throw my money around town like the rich white boy I was.  I don’t think I bought too many beers or sodas in town, just the food I needed at the market.  Seems a silly thing now, this desire to spend as little as possible just to see if I could do it, but at the time it made sense.

I wonder if I could live on $40 for 5 weeks today?  Take inflation into account.  Could I live on, say, $80 for 5 weeks?  That’s like $12 per week.  Let’s see.  Assume rent is covered, as it was for me in Ghana.  Drink only water.  Eat ramen noodles, I can get 24 packs for $8.  And I have $4 to spare for the week.  I could purchase some fruit, perhaps, or carrots.  Those seem to be cheap.  Can’t drive anywhere, can’t afford gas.  Holy crap that’s insane!  The living was cheap in Ghana, and the food was pretty good actually.  The bananas and oranges were particularly flavorful.  I think if I had gone totally native, and not written any letters, and never left my site, I could have gotten my expenses down to about $6 per week.

So yes, when I hear something like “per capita income in Ghana is $150 per year” my first thought is that everyone is starving to death.  And certainly $150 isn’t going to get you very far in Ghana.  Quite literally, it won’t get you far.  With $150 to spend for the year you are probably going to have to stay in your village and eat whatever is in season for food.  You will be able to get by, provided you don’t require medical care.  There’s the rub; the margin for error is pretty slim for people living on very little money, as it is here in the States.  Medical care is either non-existent or expensive, and therefore unattainable in either case.  As a Peace Corps Volunteer I had it easy.  Get sick?  Get injured?  I could always head to the capital for free medical treatment.  And I took advantage of that benefit frequently.  Very frequently!  For the rest, well, typically the family provides support for those in need, incapacitated by disease, injury, or age.  This is one of the reasons, perhaps the biggest reason, why rural poor women in Africa choose to have more children than women in more developed countries, or even urban women in Africa.  The family is a safety net, providing that margin of error that the state can not afford to be. 

fufu

Why, it’s a lump of paste!  I am sitting face-to-face with my first dish of fufu.  This is you know, a make or break moment for me.  Eat the fufu.  Eat it.  You can do it.  You’re going to have to learn to subsist on, if not enjoy, Ghanaian food.  Or you might just starve to death out there.  Kenke has already defeated you soundly.  Fufu is your last chance. 

There sits the ball of fufu, warm, looking like a ball of dough ready to be cooked into bread.  What I wouldn’t give for bread right now.  We can get “tea bread” in the market, it’s not that great, but it is bread, something familiar.  They even make peanut butter here, and that, I’m happy to report, is really quite good.  But again, if I’m going to make it, I need to conquer fufu!

And what is this white pasty ball of sustenance, you ask?  What is fufu?  It is a West African staple.  It is filling and hearty.  And pasty.  So pasty… At least where I was in Ghana, in the Southern part, fufu is made from African yam, or cocoyam, which is actually more like a giant mutant starchy potato than what we consider to be a yam, and cassava, which is another starchy root vegetable.  These two vegetables are practically inedible in raw form because they are so starchy.  To make fufu, the cassava and yam are pounded without mercy literally into a pulp by a woman with biceps that would make a linebacker blush.  The yam and cassava are chopped up and peeled, and then placed into a stone crucible of pain, and then they are pounded with a five foot long thick wooden pole – think caber toss here – until they are reduced to a quivering mass and ready to be boiled.  I think there may be alternating phases of boiling and pounding in order to get the consistency just right.  Seriously, I think it takes hours of food torture to properly pound out fufu from yam and cassava.  These women are not to be messed with.

Now of course this is the traditional way of making fufu.  In these modern times the Ghanaians have learned how to make fufu powder in a factory, which simply requires a bit of boiling and stirring in order to make the paste.  Sort of like making oatmeal, I suppose.  Or making mashed potatoes out of dried potato flakes instead of real potatoes, is more accurate.  And the difference in quality is similar.  Fufu made by hand by the strongest women to walk this earth in our time or any other is vastly preferred.  Of course I did not know this at the time.  And unfortunately for me, my first attempt at fufu was of the instant variety.  This was to set me back many weeks in my quest to assimilate and enjoy Ghanaian cuisine.

I was still in training, not more than one or two weeks in Ghana, when I was first served fufu.  All of us new volunteers were given this (instant) fufu with very detailed instructions on how to eat it.  I’m all for learning the ceremony of eating in other cultures, but I am also wary of food that comes with instructions.  And here were the instructions that came with fufu:

1)      Using your thumb, index finger, and middle finger, pinch off a small ball of fufu from the larger ball of fufu. It’s like creating a “mini-fu” out of the mothership of fufu.  

2)      Do not use utensils to scoop out a mini-fu.  Fufu is typically served as a communal dish, and everyone eats from the same ball of fufu, gouging away at the blob until it is drawn and quartered and can menace the table no more.

3)      Never ever use your left hand to pinch off the fufu.  It is forbidden.  Using your left hand was punishable by death, I presume, in olden times.  Now I think eating with your left hand is merely punishable by having to arm wrestle the woman who pounded the fufu, and who has forearms the size of your thighs, and who is very angry with you because now no one will eat the fufu she worked so hard at preparing all day because you have jammed your filthy disgusting satanic left hand into the communal food.  So, have fun with that.

4)      With your mini-fufu in hand, dunk the fufu into the sauce or stew.  We have not mentioned the sauce yet.  The sauce comes in several varieties, all of which are so spicy that you are expressly instructed (4a) not to touch your eyes with your right hand for fear of being blinded by the dangerously high levels of capsaicin present in the sauce.  Although forks and spoons are not allowed, I think safety goggles are an accepted accoutrement for fufu consumption.  And the temptation is there to at least wipe your brow of sweat from the general body heat generated by the stew. 

5)      Tilt your head back, and place the voodoo fire stew dunked mini-fu ball into your eagerly waiting mouth, and swallow whole this small chunk of lava-coated pasty goodness.  This is correct.  Do not chew the fufu.  Down the hatch, like an oyster.  We are not interested in chewing this food, we just want it in our bellies as quickly as possible.

6)      Do not taunt the fufu.

Of course I’m naturally left-handed so it took every fiber of my being to not violate rule #3.  This problem was solved by placing a napkin in my left hand at all times when eating.  The napkin also assisted with rule #4, in that I could use said napkin to wipe my brow instead of my right hand.  Rule #2 was easily solved because there were no utensils available for our use.

This left only Rule #1 and rule #5 to master.  I'm pretty sure I violated rule #6, you know, because I'm just that way.  And I messed up rule #1 by taking too large of a mini-fu from the fufu mothership.  I had a mega-fu on my hands, or in my (right) hand, specifically.  I dunked mega-fu into the voodoo stew, and tilted my head back, and put it in my mouth, and then, I just couldn’t get it down the old hatch.  My gag reflex kicked in, involuntarily, preventing me from choking down this fiery monster of food.  It was agonizing.  Oh God, I thought, please don’t spit it out, don’t vomit, get it down get it down get it down.  Then I broke rule #5.  I chewed.  I had no choice!  It was chew or spew, to put it bluntly.  I chewed, and chewed, and chewed, and tried to swallow.  It was like trying to eat gum.  And the spice from the stew laid waste to my taste buds with extreme prejudice, and brought tears to my eyes, and sweat to my brow.  It took every fiber of my being not to spit it back out.  But I was determined to eat fufu.  And eat it I did.  I paid the price, but I got that sucker down.  One small victory, won at great cost, but won nonetheless.  I thought that if I could conquer fufu, I was up to the challenge of kenke.  And it turns out I was up to the challenge, eventually; somehow I learned to eat and even enjoy fufu, and really enjoy kenke.  I hope to explain kenke in another post.  Suffice to say it comes with fewer instructions, but may be even more difficult to eat.

Put down the Cheddar, and no one gets hurt

“Would you like to contribute to the Whole Planet Foundation this evening?” 

No. I’m sure that they are instructed to say this at each transaction.  It’s all so impersonal and pushy. No.

Yes, give them a freaking dollar.  It’s for micro loans.  You love micro loans.  You contribute to Kiva micro loans all the time.  Muhammad Yunus was a visionary, a genius.  Honor his legacy and give a dollar.  He founded the Grameen Bank.  He turned development assistance on its head.  He changed the world.  You know that it works, don’t deny it.

“You can give one, three, or more dollars,” Joselyn, my Whole Foods Team Member Cashier says brightly.  “It’s for a good cause!”

I don’t want to.  They’re always asking me for something.  Micro loans, save the spotted tarantula, cure spotted river blindness, burn down Trader Joe’s, always something with these people.  They are trying too hard to sell a "lifestyle" instead of just groceries.  "I shop at Whole Foods and they give money to charity so that makes me a better person, right?"  Why can’t I just buy my food in peace?  Prove a point.  Tell them how much you love micro loans, how you think they are a fantastic way to help the poor people in this world, how you would give all your money to micro loans, but they just blew it by being so pushy and smug about it.  So smug.

They’re not being pushy.  You’re being an A-hole.  How else do you expect them to raise money for this project?  People don’t generally just give without prompting.  They have to be asked.  You’re the same way.  And it’s only a dollar.  You have a seven-dollar hunk of cheese in your basket, for goodness sake.  I’ll repeat.  Seven dollar hunk o’ cheddar, real nice.  In the Peace Corps your average food expense was about twelve dollars per week.  Clearly one dollar goes farther in Ghana than is does in the USA.  How about putting back the cheddar and giving a dollar to the poor people, huh?  Cheese is fattening, anyway.

Fine.  One dollar.  It’s tax-deductible, right?

Yes, it’s tax-deductible, ass.  If you remember that you donated a year from now.  Save that receipt.  You’re doing the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reasons.  Keep the cheese, you’re entitled to something nice.  And give them another dollar next time you come.  You’re blogging about Ghana, about Africa, about the poor people of the world.  You have a responsibility to help.  Doesn’t have to be much.  A dollar will do.  And again, micro loans are worthy of your dollar.

“You can add a dollar for the foundation, please,” I reply. 

“Thanks!”

She’s not getting a bonus for selling these things, is she?  That sounds distasteful.  I want to take my dollar back now. 

Too late, you’re saving the world now weather you like it or not, sucker.

Hardly.  What can one dollar do?  Look on the chart at the checkout stand.  You can donate one, three, five, or One-Hundred and Eighty dollars to the whole planet foundation.  It says here that it costs that much to fund a single micro loan.  Yup, just go ahead and scan the $180, Joselyn, no problem.  Jeez, I go to Whole Foods to buy a $3.99 loaf of bread and walk out with a $183.99 loaf of bread and a micro loan.  Actually, though, given what it costs to shop at Whole Foods, a $180 micro loan might not be all that noticeable on my weekly shopping bill.

But it is tax-deductible, and that appeals to me in some strange way that has nothing to do with saving money.  The way I see it, tax-deductible donations are the most direct way common citizens can dictate where the government spends its money.  It’s tantamount to the government saying “For every 3 dollars (or so) you give to charity, Uncle Sam will chip in one dollar.  You’ll have to put down all four dollars up front, just so we know you’re serious about doing this, but we will give you that one dollar back next year.  You can spend your four dollars on any charity you like, provided it’s a legal charity, and Uncle Sam will reimburse you, no questions asked.  Well maybe some questions asked, if we decide to audit you, but don’t worry about that; details, details, details.”  So if I feel strongly about micro loans, and I honestly do feel strongly about them, in a good way, then I could give a lot of money to micro loan charities like the Whole Planet Foundation, or the Grameen Bank, and the government would be obligated to “chip in” so to speak.  Of course it doesn’t really work that way exactly.  I suppose the government will just make up for the lost revenue due to the charitable donations of a bunch of bloody do-gooders by printing up more money and spending it on whatever they wanted to spend it on in the first place, thus slipping our country into a death-spiral of hyperinflation and fascism.  So don’t get too crazy with the donations, you know, for the good of our country and what not.

But all kidding aside, micro loans are a neat thing.  Kind of like micro beers.  A little more expensive to produce, but generally more satisfying.  Did I say all kidding aside?

Mohammad Yunus, a Bengali economist, came up with the idea of micro loans in the 1970s after witnessing first-hand the terrible famine of Bangladesh in 1974.  Mr. Yunus recognized that the rural poor of Bangladesh – particularly women – did not have access to low interest rate loans because they generally had no collateral with which to secure a loan, they were seen as credit flight risks, and quite frankly it was difficult and expensive for traditional banks to market and sell small loans to rural people.  But the rural poor still needed access to credit in order to create and expand businesses, no matter how small, and also to improve their farms and houses, pay for medical care and emergencies, and generally improve their lot in life.  Because traditional banks could not be bothered with these loans, a market opened up for small businesses that would take on the risk and make these loans.  The only problem was that these gap-fillers were more often than not predatory lenders, charging exorbitant interest rates and ultimately pushing the borrowers further into poverty with their usurious inertest rates and unsavory business practices.

Mr. Yunus recognized an opportunity to step in and essentially compete with the predatory lenders by offering loans to the rural poor women of Bangladesh at more reasonable rates of return.  Starting with a small grant, he created what became the Grameen Bank in 1983, and since then, through some ups and downs, the bank has been a tremendous success. 

Not wholly without criticism, however.  The interest rates the Grameen Bank charges are still about 20%, which is of course much higher than the interest rates from traditional banks.  But still much lower than unregulated predatory loan interest rates, which can easily top 100%.  Certainly not all loans are repaid, and sometimes loans go bad for the borrowers, which can lead to ruin for the family or families that take out said loans.  It’s not perfect but it serves an important niche.

So I’ll give to the Whole Planet Foundation this month, you bet.  Each time I shop at Whole Foods this month I pledge to tack on a dollar to my bill for their micro loans.  And I shop there quite a bit actually, since my office is just a hop, skip, and a jump over the Burlington-Northern stockade fence from Whole Foods.  And I encourage you all to do the same.  Just for a month, put down the cheddar and put up a dollar for the poor peeps out there who otherwise have trouble getting access to funds they could use to build their businesses, build their homes, better their lives.

Peace (Corps) Out.