The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

by Jacqueline Novogratz

  I drove to the bakery project with Boniface to find Prisca and a few of the women she'd tracked down in the neighborhood working feverishly to fill the order. We were nearly 2 hours late to the party, but my friend at least pretended to understand. Still, I was livid and Prisca was embarrassed. The next morning we asked the women who had attended the funeral what had happened. They answered very matter-of-factly that their friend had died and the lady with the party would have to wait.

  That Friday, we called a meeting. The women gathered on the benches and sat silently, most just staring ahead. We talked about promises made and the importance of promises kept. "We're not telling you not to go to the funeral," Prisca told the women, "but there are enough of us here that you can find a replacement for yourself if for some reason you can't work. Remember this is your business."

  The women were only beginning to internalize that the success of the project was really up to them. For it to succeed, everyone had to see it as a full-fledged enterprise. We had enough customers to turn a profit, and it had become time to claim ourselves to be a legitimate business. Though I'd told the women this on my very first visit, it was several months before they began to believe it.

  I shared with Prisca an idea I had to turn the little house in Nyamirambo into a real bakery from which we could sell our goods directly to neighborhood customers. Townspeople already referred to the project as a bakery, but it didn't have a main store, a place where people could drop in to buy our goods. The women would still go into town to offices each morning with their buckets, but once we had an actual store, we could increase sales, build our brand, and begin to expand into other product lines. Prisca loved the idea.

  The first step was to give our building a fresh coat of paint. The exterior had been painted a dull gray stucco; the interior beige walls were smudged and scratched. Everything needed sprucing up. Consciously trying to learn to listen and not just hand out my own ideas, I offered to pay for the paint and other materials, but insisted that the women choose the color themselves.

  When they would not offer an opinion on the color, I resisted making my own suggestions, knowing the women would try to please me instead of saying what they really felt. I told them repeatedly that this was their bakery, on their street, in their country, but my words seemed to land on deaf ears.

  "What do you think?" they would ask.

  One week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks passed. Each week, I asked the same question. Each week, I got nowhere.

  Finally, at the end of the third week, I gave up, unable to take the waiting anymore. "What about blue?" I asked.

  "Blue, blue, we love blue. Let's do it blue."

  At the only paint store in town, I purchased a bright blue paint, picked up blue-checkered cloth for curtains, and found several big pieces of plywood to make into signs. The women sewed perfect curtains, and I spent an entire night painting signs to hang inside and outside the bakery so that we would have an identity as the blue bakery of Nyamirambo. The signs were written in French for prestige, though most people in Nyamirambo could understand only Kinyarwanda, and many couldn't read. Status counted for a lot.

  When painting day arrived, everyone turned out to help. My friend Charles, a tall, lanky, 25-year-old French Canadian who worked for the United Nations Development Program, arrived dressed in his signature wrinkled oxford shirt and khakis. The women warmed to him the minute he turned on the music and Aretha Franklin's rhythmic melodies and golden voice filled the streets. Together, we looked at the color in the paint cans-it was a pure blue, bright and straightforward, and everyone liked it.

  The original idea was to paint the interior walls bright white and use the blue for trim, both inside and out. But this approach was not as satisfying as painting a wall blue like a morning sky. We even painted some of the windows blue. The women danced, laughed, and painted the world. Gaudence's short hair became speckled with blue paint. Parts of the sidewalk out front were painted bright blue, and little blue freckles appeared on the face of the gray stucco walls outside. Above us, the clear sky felt like a giant crystal dome, and a gentle breeze seemed to tinkle blessings upon this forgotten corner of the world.

  A neighborhood crowd gathered to watch the phenomenon of women wielding blue paintbrushes, refusing to acquiesce to little boys begging for turns to paint. Onlookers munched on waffles and people danced in the street. When Aretha shouted "R-E-S-P-E-C-T," hips and paintbrushes moved to the rhythm. Even Gaudence was smiling.

  After more than 8 straight hours of painting, we were finished. I joined the women outside in the street to look at what we'd accomplished. We were hot and hungry and covered in blue. For a minute we didn't say a word.

  It was so beautiful.

  The color was perfect, I said. Most of the heads around me nodded in agreement-except for that of Gaudence.

  I looked at her as she sucked in her breath. "What?" I asked with my eyes.

  She whispered to Prisca, who shook her head slowly.

  "What?" I asked again, one eyebrow raised.

  "She thinks it is very nice," Prisca translated, "but you know, Jacqueline, our color is green."

  Gaudence had been the only one courageous enough to tell the truth about the paint color, but she'd waited until it was too late. We all agreed that the color of the bakery would have to be blue-but the women would continue wearing their green gingham uniforms for contrast.

  I walked home alone from Nyamirambo that evening, covered in paint, feeling tired, elated, and also perplexed that I'd tried so hard to listen and still ended up choosing the wrong color. On one hand, I hadn't wanted to wait for months until the women made a decision. On the other, I began to understand that I could have listened better, for listening is not just having the patience to wait, it is also learning how to ask the questions themselves. People who've always been dependent on others for some kind of charity or goodwill often have a hard time saying what they really want because usually no one asks them. And if they are asked, the poor often think no one really wants to hear the truth. I had to admit to myself that I was still building trust.

  The reality of our beautiful new bakery didn't stop the setbacks, of course. One morning I walked into the offices at UNICEF and was told by a frantic Damescene, the office assistant, that half of Kigali had called. "It seems that everyone in the city is suffering from eating the baked goods," he said.

  "What do you mean by `suffering'?" I asked.

  He looked at the floor in embarrassment. "You know," he said gently, "maybe they are having pains in their stomach, and many are going home sick."

  Feeling like Typhoid Mary, I called all of the embassies and government offices to apologize and promised to take care of the problem. Boniface and I drove quickly to the bakery and approached the women cooking in back.

  "Everyone is sick with the runs," I said. "Did you do anything differently?" They shook their heads.

  I asked to see what they were preparing. The smell was stale, sour, and rancid.

  "When did you last change the cooking oil?" I asked.

  "Oh, never," Josepha answered gleefully. "We have been adding just a little more each day. We are keeping costs low so that we can have high sales and more profit."

  Next lesson: quality control.

  Despite the bumps in the road, within a few months we had cornered the snack market in Kigali, expanding beyond our repertoire of fried dough in a variety of shapes to making cassava chips and banana chips (thinly sliced, fried in oil, dusted with salt and chili powder, then placed in plastic bags) and peanut butter. When we purchased plastic containers from the local honey factory for the latter, I began dreaming about starting a factory to create hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs, for I'd witnessed the difference the bakery had made in those 20 women's lives. Few investors or donors were prepared to invest in Africa, yet I was seeing tremendous potential for change. I told myself that at some point in my life, I would come back with more experience to start a factory or do something more directly focused on
large-scale private enterprise that created new jobs.

  But for the moment, my life when I wasn't working with Duterimbere was focused on ensuring the bakery was a success. The cassava and banana chips turned out to be favorites with the locals. We sold our spicy chips to most of the retail stores, and people would drop by the bakery in Nyamirambo to pick up packets, as well. I still did too much of the marketing, but in time the women gained the confidence to venture into stores to replenish orders. Sometimes, a few of the women and I would walk through little shops in town just to point proudly to our products on the shelves. Together we had created a new product that hadn't existed before-and people liked it! Nothing could be more satisfying.

  Within 8 months or so, the women were earning $2 a day-four times more than when we started together, and much more than most earned in Kigali; and in some weeks, they earned more than $3. Few people earned that kind of money in Rwanda, certainly not women. For the first time, their incomes allowed them to decide when to say yes and when to say no. Money is freedom and confidence and choice. And choice is dignity. The solidarity of the bakery also gave them a sense of belonging that made them even stronger.

  Once the bakery cornered the market for snack foods, we decided to focus on bread. The bread in Kigali was generally atrocious. The United States and a number of countries in Europe were dumping surplus wheat grown by heavily subsidized farmers on countries like Rwanda, so that rich and poor alike had little choice but to buy bleached white, weevil-ridden flour. A few stores in town made their own bread, but it was often stale. At the same time, sorghum fields abounded in the areas around Kigali, and the price for it was low-possibly the key to creating a rich grain bread.

  Prisca and I discussed the value of bringing nutritious bread to the market, especially for low-income women who would benefit from the lower cost. An Italian woman gave her a recipe, and she experimented until she'd baked a delicious whole-grain bread. We tried selling it in Nyamirambo, but quickly met with failure. Poor urban Rwandans preferred the white bread, not because it tasted better but because it was a symbol of luxury, of something imported. It didn't matter that it was more expensive-in fact, the higher price made the imported bread even more desirable.

  Despite the many experiments, the failures, and the setbacks, the little bakery continued to flourish under Prisca's leadership, and she created at least one place in Nyamirambo that operated on its own merit, covering its costs with the products it sold and teaching the women that they could control their own lives. It operated for a long time after I left-until the genocide destroyed so much of what was beautiful.

  The story of the bakery was one of the human transformation that comes with being seen, being held accountable, succeeding. I had the privilege of watching the women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency, and I learned that language is perhaps only half the equation in how people communicate with one another. I discovered the power of creating a business with real accountability. And I learned to be myself and to laugh at myself, to share in the women's successes, and, maybe most importantly, to listen with my heart and not just my head.

  CHAPTER 6

  DANCING IN THE DARK

  "I have only one request. /I do not ash for money/Although I have need of it, / I do not ash for meat ... /I have only one request, / All I ash is / That you remove/ the roadblock /From my path."

  -OKOT P'BITEK, "SONG OF AN AFRICAN WOMAN"

  t was early 1988, and I was still spending most of my time in Kigali .with Duterimbere and the blue bakery. Given my schedule, I had only my early morning runs for recreation as well as reflection. I have always cherished the dawn, especially in Africa. I love being part of a place's awakening-watching the sky glow brighter, listening to the birds and insects calling. In Kigali, thick fog floats across the dark green hills like a band of whipped cream until it burns away to unveil the bright blue sky. Canopied streets filled with bougainvillea and hibiscus heave their heavy scents, swirling perfume in the air.

  One mild morning, despite the wake-up revelry, I could barely move a muscle. My joints ached, my head pounded, and nausea swirled. Dragging myself to the breakfast table, I described my symptoms to the houseguests, an Italian doctor and his wife, a nurse from Uganda. After glancing at one another, Margaret put her hand to my head and said simply, "Malaria"

  They gave me quinine and I went back to bed, where I would stay for the next few days, moving in and out of raging fevers accompanied by wild, intense dreams and deep pains in my elbows and knees. One minute my body would be racked with chills and the next, feel like it was on fire. Almost everyone I'd known in Rwanda had had malaria and some, like the woman from Duterimbere, had died from it. I now understood how the African continent could lose so much work productivity due to this illness alone: Each year, about a quarter billion Africans contract cases of malaria.

  My friends calmed me, fed me papaya, gave me medicine, and made me drink hot tea. There is a Kiswahili saying: "Medicine for heat is heat." Hot tea for hot days and for fevers, too. I stayed in bed, wondering how long it would take to feel my energy again, grateful that I usually lived with such good health.

  The delirium and achiness lasted about a week, and I was eager to jump back into life. There was much to do with both the bank and the bakery, and I didn't want to waste any more time. Cesare, the doctor who had such a gentle manner, urged me to take a day or two more to rest, and it was on the last day at home that Prudence visited unannounced.

  She walked into my room and teased, "Maybe this was the only way God could help you slow down and rest a bit."

  "Not funny," I responded, assuring her that I had relaxed and was feeling refreshed and excited to get back into the thick of things again.

  Prudence sighed. "Oh, my dearest. We love how hard you are pushing the work forward. At the same time, you might be going too quickly for where Rwanda is right now. We have to move at the right pace. Change is more gradual here, you see? And we need to bring all of the women with us and not run too far ahead of them.

  "What makes it harder to keep up with you," she continued, "is that our lives have so many obligations attached to them. We have funerals and weddings and births and so many commitments, you see? If you don't slow down, I worry that Duterimbere will rely too much on you and not on Rwandan women themselves."

  Her honesty caused my face to flush and my stomach to drop. I was stunned that the women didn't like my pace, for no one had said a word to that effect. In fact, just the opposite had seemed true. Each time we met another deadline, everyone would cheer and remind themselves that we were doing the impossible. Of course, I'd been driving hard, anxious that the institution might flounder without a sense of urgency.

  I took a deep breath, trying hard to listen to what Prudence was saying, knowing she was probably right. Perhaps my pace had been more about my agenda than theirs.

  "What would you suggest I do?" I asked her, somewhat defensively.

  "We've been thinking about that and talking to Mary Racelis."

  Mary, UNICEF's East Africa regional director, was a great community organizer and a friend.

  "We all think that with your energy, you would be well placed to spend 2 months here in Rwanda and then go to a UNICEF office somewhere in East Africa for 2 months to work with women in slums or rural women as well on enterprise development. It will give you the chance to see so much in Africa and also to help us build something that will last."

  Though it stung to be considered a puppy, all eager and bouncy, the thought of having a break from Rwanda every 2 months was appealing: There was something about Kigali itself that felt oppressive. I wasn't sure what kind of work would be waiting for me in other East African locations, but I loved exploring new places.

  A week later, I left for Nairobi to spend a few days with Mary Racelis. Over a plate of eggs and toast, the diminutive Filipino woman put her hand on my shoulder and told me what a gift Prudence had given to me.

  "Do you kn
ow how lucky you are that she trusts you enough to tell you the truth?" she asked. "Prudence wants you to succeed just as she wants Duterimbere to succeed. She's just letting you know the right way to do it, not because you were doing anything wrong, but because there is a way you could be doing things more effectively. By giving women work plans and leaving them on their own for 2 months and then coming back reenergized, you will be helping to build an institution brick by brick."

  AT I T TURNED OUT, I loved my life in Nairobi. Though it was just a few hours away from Kigali by plane, I always felt like I was returning to a mini-Manhattan when I boarded the flight to Kenya. Whereas Kigali was a small town with just a few restaurants and crafts stores, Nairobi was a true city, with galleries and bookstores, movie theaters, and a big international community. I would meet friends to watch foreign films at the French Cultural Center, have sushi at one of the Japanese restaurants, or dance at the Carnivore Restaurant, where waiters walked from table to table with enormous skewers of hartebeest, crocodile, and eland.

  Maybe most important to me, the modest third-floor walk-up apartment I'd rented when I first arrived in Nairobi was as close to a permanent home as I had during that period. It was a one-bedroom with indooroutdoor carpeting, a tiny kitchen and living room, a bathroom with an enormous tub, and small balconies in back and front-not much to brag about, but it was mine and I loved it. I'd decorated the walls with tapestries from my travels, batiks from the local markets, and baskets galore and would fill the rooms with fresh flowers whenever I was in town.

  The apartment's interior was as colorful as the people who lived and worked in the building, mostly young, newly middle-class Kenyans or refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia, all striving for better lives. Since none of us had a telephone, we would shout to one another from our balconies and simply knock on doors to drop by. It was like dormitory life, though my travels to Kigali and other African capitals meant I was rarely there.