by Nina Munk
The Millennium Villages Project aimed to teach self-sufficiency. At the same time, confusing matters, the people of Dertu had been dependent on international food aid since the great lafaad drought of the 1970s. Instead of using traditional coverings (woven-grass mats and hides), people in and around the village were now covering their aqals with plastic tarps from the UN Refugee Agency and with burlap grain bags stamped with the blue logo of the UN World Food Program. In the small commercial center of the village, empty tins of vegetable oil from USAID were hammered flat and made into doors.
Month after month, accustomed to the ritual by this time, people lined up for rations from the UN: a four-liter (one-gallon) tin of cooking oil, enriched porridge for the children, bags of rice and cornmeal. A good number of locals (no one knew how many) quietly maintained a second residence in one of the nearby Dadaab refugee camps, where they received additional food aid and essential goods—tarps, charcoal, blankets, and so on. Once a month, thanks to UNICEF’s Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children program, between fifty and one hundred of Dertu’s children (or their guardians) received 500 Ksh ($7) each.
“Our people have refugee syndrome,” Ahmed said reflectively. “There are so many handouts here. Free food, free medications, free water, free education. And now we come in and talk to them about empowerment. Are you seeing the problem? The concept is very hard.”
Chapter 7
It Will Be Sweet Like Honey
Ahmed kept a well-thumbed copy of The End of Poverty in his office and could recite certain passages from memory. “At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development,” Jeffrey Sachs had written. “The development ladder hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.”
With the Millennium project’s core interventions in place (medical supplies, classrooms, pit latrines), the people of Dertu were no longer struggling just to stay alive. Arguably, they were on the first step of the development ladder. The next step, as Ahmed understood it, was to help them discover practical, creative ways to earn a living and escape the poverty trap. The whole purpose of foreign aid, he reminded his staff (quoting the Great Professor), was to “jump-start” the process of capital accumulation, economic growth, and household income. Sooner or later the money Dertu was receiving from the Millennium Villages Project would dry up. When that happened, how would the local population manage to sustain itself? What were the options? For all the progress Ahmed had made, there was no real economy in North Eastern Province—nothing that offered people long-term, stable employment.
“We have no water. We have no oil. We have no minerals. We have only animals,” Ahmed said. “If you say to me, ‘One day you will grow crops,’ I will ask you, ‘From where will you get water?’ If you say to me, ‘One day there will be industry,’ I will ask you, ‘From where will you get water?’ ”
For the past fifty years or so, ever since Kenya achieved independence, development experts have been confronted by a huge stumbling block: there isn’t enough water or arable land in the country to meet the needs of its fast-growing population. In the arid North Eastern Province, where it hardly ever rains and rain-fed agriculture is out of the question, the only long-term solution is to divert water from the region’s one dependable water source, the Tana, Kenya’s longest river. From the fertile highlands of Mount Kenya, the Tana runs 440 miles, along the dry western fringe of North Eastern Province, toward Kenya’s tropical coastline, and into the Indian Ocean.
Over the years, supported by massive amounts of foreign aid and goodwill, one failed irrigation project after another has attempted to supply North Eastern Province with water by diverting it from the Tana River. The village of Bura, about 120 miles south of Dertu, is the site of the most infamous irrigation project in Kenya.
Launched in 1977 by the World Bank, the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project proposed to “settle the landless, create employment, and contribute to foreign exchange earnings by producing cotton and food (maize).” The project would divert the Tana, build pumping stations, dig 34 miles of canals, create water distribution and drainage systems, and clear and level 16,500 acres of barren land.
The Bura project represented far more than a simple irrigation scheme; it was an “integrated rural development project”—a popular approach to development in the 1970s and early 1980s, whereby all the root causes of poverty were to be eradicated at one time. Plans for Bura included building a commercial center and twenty-three surrounding villages, all from scratch. Roads, houses, and latrines were constructed, along with six primary schools, a secondary school, a health center, a police station, a telephone repeater station, and a clubhouse with a swimming pool. Approximately 65,000 of North Eastern Province’s poorest inhabitants were to be moved from their mud huts and aqals and resettled in Bura.
So ambitious was the Bura project that by the early 1980s it was swallowing up fully one-quarter of Kenya’s total public investment in agriculture. You can probably guess what followed. An internal report from the World Bank, published in 1990, devotes forty single-spaced pages to the folly. One undertaking or another was “doomed,” “inappropriate,” “erroneous,” “problematic,” “inadequate.” We read about “cost escalation,” “lack of technical knowledge,” “managerial difficulties,” “frequent breakdowns,” “lack of financial viability,” and “poor performance.”
Even if you overlook charges of incompetence, the Bura project was ill-fated from the start. It didn’t make economic sense. No matter how many thousands of gallons of water the Bura project managed to divert from the Tana, agricultural yields in North Eastern Province could never justify the cost of irrigation. By the time the Bura project was officially abandoned in 1987, more than $100 million had been wasted. Adjusted for inflation, that’s approximately $200 million today.
To Ahmed, the failure of the Bura Irrigation Settlement Project confirmed the obvious: “Pastoralism is the only real future for us—all other paths are doomed to fail.”
In his view, the only long-term solution to the problems of North Eastern Province was to accept its natural order, its traditional way of life, and make the region self-sustaining. He wanted to preserve Dertu’s nomadic pastoralist economy. At the same time, the economy would diversify into related areas such as leather tanning, livestock trading, and large-scale milk production. In turn, economic diversification would link Dertu to the regional and even the global economy.
Slowly, encouraged by the Millennium Villages’ office in New York, Ahmed put his plan into action. His top priority was to establish a livestock market in Dertu. As it was, pastoralists who wanted to sell their animals had only two options:
1. They could sell their animals to one of the few ambitious, hard-nosed traders who ventured upcountry; in which case, they might receive half of what they’d get in Garissa.
2. They and their livestock (camels, cows, goats, donkeys) could undertake the sixty-mile trek from Dertu to the weekly livestock auction in Garissa. On their way they might be robbed at gunpoint by cattle raiders. Once they arrived, they would be exploited by dilal, middlemen who knew very well that anyone who’d walked from Dertu was unlikely to return home empty-handed, no matter how little he received for his livestock.
One way or the other, invariably, pastoralists were shortchanged. Dertu was at the bottom of the market chain, and bush traders and dilal were voracious bottom-feeders. A goat might sell in Dertu for 1,200 Ksh ($15), be resold in Garissa for 2,000 Ksh, and be sold again to a slaughterhouse in Nairobi for 4,000 Ksh. Camel milk fetched twice as much in Garissa as it did in Dertu. Not surprisingly, the big money was made by those who were rich enough to own trucks or livestock trailers: the average dilal in Garissa made between 15,000 and 20,000 Ksh (between $185 and $250) on a single market day. To put things in perspective, that wa
s more or less what people in Dertu earned in an entire year.
Sachs railed at that sort of market inefficiency. The farther away a herdsman lived from a market, the more likely it was he’d be exploited. In theory, the problem shouldn’t have been hard to solve. With better roads, pastoralists living in the hinterlands would have better access to markets. As soon as people had cell phones, they’d inform themselves of current market prices before leaving Dertu for Garissa; they could also arrange the sale of their animals ahead of time. The best solution of all, Ahmed argued, would be to bring the livestock market to Dertu.
Setting aside a huge parcel of land not far from the water hole, Ahmed invested months of work, and tens of thousands of dollars, to establishing Dertu’s livestock market. More than one million Ksh ($12,000) was spent on fencing—on holding pens for camels, cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys, for example. There were weighing stations, an auction stand, water troughs, and racks to hold branding irons. In order to channel water from the watering hole to the market, a distance of about one mile, Ahmed hired a crew of laborers to dig trenches. Each worker was paid a day rate of 300 Ksh ($3.50). Technical experts sent to Dertu by Kenya’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation installed and connected high-quality PVC pipes to an immense 24,000-liter (6,340-gallon) water tank. The entire venture was underwritten by the Millennium Villages Project.
One section of the livestock market would be given over to commercial stalls. As envisioned by Ahmed, the stalls would sell tea, snacks, animal feed, veterinary medicines, and gasoline to traders who’d arrive in Dertu from across the Horn of Africa. Eventually, if things went as planned, Dertu would have a slaughterhouse and a tannery. Paved roads would fan out in all directions, like interstate highways.
“The travelers will come with vehicles,” Ahmed said, “and they will need a garage and fuel and somewhere to rest. The livestock market will be our milking cow. It will be our engine. It will be sweet like honey.”
The Millennium Villages Project Livestock Market opened officially on Jeffrey Sachs’s first visit to Dertu in the summer of 2007. Together with his wife, Sonia, Sachs made his way from Garissa in a convoy of heavily armored UN vehicles, tinted windows rolled up tight, air-conditioning set to high. The entire village turned out to mark the occasion; hundreds of people assembled in the midday sun, waiting for the arrival of Sachs and his party. A dozen or so regional government officials in well-polished shoes were seated in a row of plastic chairs beneath a sagging blue-and-white-striped tent that, at every moment, threatened to collapse.
“Thank you for having us in Dertu today,” Sachs began, addressing the expectant crowd. “We are so grateful to be here.” Draped over his left shoulder was a red-and-white-checked kaffiyeh, a gift from the village elders. The welcoming committee presented him with a traditional wooden staff. A macawis (Somali sarong) was tied around his waist. Someone took photographs. A group of local men performed a Somali dance, and Sachs joined in, hopping from one foot to the other and clapping and smiling.
It was time for speeches. “We went to see the school—what a wonderful school,” he enthused. “We went to see the clinic. And we went to see the new Millennium livestock market. People will come from many, many kilometers away to your market! It will be the most important market in the region!”
The crowd roared with pleasure and appreciation. Women sprang to their feet and began ululating. He continued, “Dertu will become the center of the economy in the region!”
I’d heard Sachs give several versions of that speech in various African villages. And yet in Dertu he was just as enthusiastic, as convincing, as ever. Like other charismatic speakers, he never fails to inspire. “A few days ago, in New York, I told the secretary-general of the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, that I was coming to Dertu, and he said to send his good wishes to all of you,” he told the crowd. “And yesterday, when I arrived in Nairobi, I spoke to Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general, and I told Mr. Annan that we were coming to Dertu, and he also sends good wishes to all of you.”
At the mention of the Ghana-born Kofi Annan, the crowd went wild.
“This is very good for Dertu,” Sachs went on, his voice louder so he’d be heard above the thrashing tent flaps. The wind had picked up. The tent was swaying. “Two secretary-generals saying hello to you! Now I will go back to tell them all of the wonderful things you are doing here! I will tell them how much progress Dertu is making!
“Every time you take a step forward, we will be with you to help! As fast as you go, we’ll run along with you! We will help build more classrooms. We will build more dormitories. We will make sure all the children have a meal at school. And when more children go to school, we will help build a secondary school. So I want to ask the children: Do you like being in school?”
Haa! Haa! Haa! Yes! Yes! Yes!
“We will help get a maternity ward at the clinic. And with all the wind you have here, we can turn that wind into electricity, and Dertu can provide power to everyone.”
Haa! Haa! Haa!
“We will come back again to see all the progress you are making. We will always have Dertu in our hearts.” With that, Sachs and his party climbed into their air-conditioned SUVs, waved goodbye, and left.
From Dertu, Sachs’s procession headed back to Garissa, where he was scheduled to meet Kiritu Wamae, the district commissioner for North Eastern Province. It had been a long day. Sachs looked hot and dusty. His hair was pasted to his head. His khakis and button-down shirt were badly wrinkled. Despite the oppressive heat, the district commissioner was wearing a dark suit and tie, and the overhead fan in his office was idle. On his desk, like a relic from the Brezhnev era, was a bank of four push-button telephones.
“You have to think how you want Garissa to look ten years from now,” Sachs told the district commissioner. “Perhaps you’d like to be a major center for livestock trading. This is already a regional livestock center, I realize—but have you considered what it would take to be a highly productive livestock center? You could market camel milk—not just out of jerry cans, but in bulk, with pasteurization plants. What about a meat-packaging plant with refrigeration? What other areas are there for cash earnings? I believe that for the communities along the Tana River, we can get donors to provide investments to create irrigation systems.”
Transforming the lives of people in a remote village was important, but it wasn’t enough. What mattered to Sachs was taking his project to scale. One day, viewed from space, the African continent would be one vast Millennium village. Of course it would take time, but in the interim, what Sachs feared most was the loss of momentum. “It’s like an airplane,” he once said, referring to the Millennium Villages Project. “If the climb rate’s not high enough, you’ll never take off.”
Sachs’s project had to expand quickly. He hoped to have as many as one thousand Millennium villages by 2009; for the time being, however, it was important that the project expand beyond individual villages, first to surrounding villages, then to entire districts or provinces. The reason he was meeting with the district commissioner was to convince him to turn all of North Eastern Province into one huge Millennium district with Garissa at its core.
“I want you to dream a little bit,” Sachs said. “What would a model district look like? Once you have the answer to that, then together we can figure out how to get there from here. We need financing from the government and donors and also from private investors—but to get those investors we need a plan to sell them. This is a sales job.”
Encouraged by Sachs’s optimism, Kiritu Wamae had several ideas. Camel milk could be pasteurized; camel hooves could be made into buttons; and camel bones could be ground into animal feed. “We have a lot of gypsum, so also making cement is a possibility,” the commissioner informed Sachs. “Myrrh could be used for perfumes and medicines. And agro-processing: along the Tana, there is potential to irrigate twenty-four thousand acres, but only two thousand acres are now irrigated.”
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What’s the chance of getting investors from the United Arab Emirates?” asked Sachs.
“Well, the Emirates are not investing here, but they are in Somaliland,” answered the district commissioner, referring to the breakaway state in northern Somalia.
“Somaliland!” Sachs laughed in disbelief. “They’re investing in Somaliland but not here? You should be able to compete against Somaliland—you actually have a country!”
Sachs had other good ideas. “Maybe you need a paradigm shift,” he said. “Maybe you need to find out what the market needs and produce for that. Maybe, instead of looking to sell overseas, in Europe or the Middle East where the health barriers are high, you should find ways to sell to other parts of Africa. It’s a big market. The better ideas we have, the more funds we can raise.”
“We have not marketed North Eastern Province properly,” conceded the district commissioner. “We need to market so people know that North Eastern is not a security threat for investors.”
“I think we need to create an investor roundtable here—I’d like to try to attract foreign investors to Garissa. If you hosted an investor roundtable, I could bring people here. Could you do that?”
“Please.”
“What about tourism?” asked Sachs. “You know, camel safaris for people who want to learn about Somali culture.”
Pasteurization plants, camel safaris, and money pouring in from the Emirates: for Sachs, no idea was too far-fetched. He’s never cynical. On the contrary, what drives him is an absolute conviction that the world can be changed for the better.
The district commissioner nodded happily in agreement. “The hirola antelope is endangered and is found only in North Eastern Province,” he observed. “We have giraffes and lions. It would be possible to have tourism. There are ostriches. When it is winter [in Europe], people can come and enjoy our animals and our weather.”