Adam, the twenty-eight-year-old accountant, was generally quiet but could be made to laugh easily. Tall, rangy, and handsome, he lived with his brother (a student at the local polytech, where Whit had searched in vain for job candidates) and wore immaculately pressed shirts and slacks. After graduating from Accra’s Institute for Chartered Accountants, he worked as the finance officer for Youth Empowerment Synergy Ghana (YES Ghana), a local NGO. Adam was from Volta Region, stronghold of the Ewe, where he grew up in a village under sacred Mount Adaklu, an imposing butte that marks the spot to which the Ewe first migrated (from lands farther east) some five centuries ago. Although steeped in traditional African customs (his father, as mentioned earlier, was a chief), Adam was also devoutly Christian. Sometimes I would notice Post-it notes on his computer with biblical aphorisms he had jotted down for the day. He never touched alcohol and was apparently an excellent singer in his church choir, although I never heard him intone. We did, however, have several conversations about music after he became aware of the rhythm-and-blues collection on my iPod, and it was clear to me that he had an ear for all sorts of music. Sometimes on village trips we would hear some indigenous music (live or on the radio), and he would explain to me its exact tribal provenance and even the style of dancing one was expected to perform to the beat. I came to think of Adam as the sensitive-artist employee, which is possibly not the best recommendation for an accountant. Indeed, Whit worried that Adam was occasionally in over his head (and was quite frank to him about it), but as we all did, he liked Adam and felt certain he was honest, if not always sharply focused. Part of the problem was that we obrunis had a hard time understanding Adam’s English, which was grammatically correct but heavily accented. This disconnect appeared specific to the Ewe—I also had to listen carefully to understand Charlie’s technically perfect English—and was, perhaps not surprisingly, reciprocal. While Whit and I had little trouble trotting out a handful of basic Twi phrases, our attempts at Ewe were generally met with polite laughter. We simply could not pronounce the words comprehensibly, let alone properly.
“It seems my work day is getting bigger,” said Adam in response to Jan’s request.
“That’s good!” said Whit. Adam laughed self-consciously.
“Well, I was going to suggest that route managers handle their own Fodder input, which would take some pressure off Adam,” said Jan.
“Oh, but we get back so late!” Kevin protested. “That could be a problem.”
“I don’t think it will take that much time under the new system,” said Jan, “but let’s think about it. Maybe you guys can come up with a solution and present it to us. Let’s move on. Where do we stand on the replacement battery sleeves?” She was referring to the green plastic Burro labels that fit over the battery; Whit was concerned that the beat-up labels on older batteries were contributing to the perception by some customers that the batteries were not good. “Does China have the file yet?” meaning the digital artwork.
“Ready to go,” said Whit. “The sleeves should be no problem. They’re being air-freighted so it won’t take long.”
“How do we put them on the batteries?” asked Kevin.
“Heat shrink,” said Whit. “You just use a hair dryer. I asked them when I was there if they would be cut to length and they said yes.”*
“What about more D adapters?” asked Kevin. “We are almost out.”
“They’re on the way,” said Whit.
“I hope they are better than the last ones. I’ve been seeing some in the villages that are already corroded on the contact point. Customers are complaining.” Kevin was keenly attuned to customer complaints, or at least ostensibly; sometimes it seemed like his reports from the field, generally downbeat, were more projections of his own issues than anything the customers actually noticed. When Whit and I talked to customers, they seemed mostly buoyant about the batteries—but then we were obrunis, so praise in our direction had to be devalued by the sycophancy factor, like a currency exchange. “The new ones should be better,” said Whit. “Three-Sixty* tested them in an environmental chamber—blasting them with high humidity and water that’s supposed to simulate two or three years of use. I can’t say they looked pretty after that—I can show you the photos they emailed me—but they still worked fine.”
“Speaking of water damage, I do have a housekeeping issue on the agenda,” said Jan. In fact there it was, “Housekeeping,” on the agenda. “Men, can you please put the seat up when you tinkle and down when you’re done? The rest of us would really appreciate it.”
“Nice segue, Jan,” I said.
“Thank you. Anybody have anything else? Okay, this meeting is over.”
The weekly meetings, which focused on problem solving and follow-up on tasks, encouraged initiative and personal responsibility—qualities not always emphasized in Ghanaian work culture. But Whit wanted—in fact needed, if he were to spend much time at all back home with his family—Rose, Kevin, and Adam to take even more “ownership” of the business. They needed some skin in the game. So he designed a bonus plan, which he unveiled at the August 26 meeting.
“I’m open to feedback on this,” he began, “but here’s what I’m thinking so far. I don’t want to set impossible goals; this year we’ll be hard-pressed to just break even, and I want you guys to be motivated. So this is based on some realistic goals that will help make the company a success. These bonuses aren’t pocket change. We’re not talking bags of rice here. We’re talking real money. Each of you has a chance to get a thousand-cedi bonus, paid in January, based on Burro results through December. That would be the maximum per person.”
A thousand cedis was considerably more than a month’s pay for each of them.
“Now, don’t get your hopes up; frankly there is little chance you will get all that money. It’s incremental, and we’re asking all of you to do a lot of crossover work and build as a team to grow the company. So here’s how we see it.”
Jan went to the whiteboard and started diagramming as Whit continued.
“Two hundred cedis of your bonus will be based on your own personal goals and objectives.”
“You mean like our job description?” asked Rose.
“No. That’s different than goals. Adam and I are already working on very specific objectives for him, with completion dates, and Jan and I will get similar detailed goals for you guys. If, in the fair and reasonable decision of management, you have met your objectives, you will get this two hundred cedis.
“Another two hundred cedis will be tied to the other two people meeting their goals. Because we are a team. So Kevin, you have an interest in Rose and Adam meeting their goals, and Rose, you want Kevin and Adam to meet their goals. You guys have to work together.
“Then two hundred cedis is tied to meeting cost targets, keeping our costs down. These will be based on things you can control, not salaries or rent, but things you guys can control in the day-to-day way you run the business, like buying supplies and maintaining the cars. I’ll work with Adam and Jan to define what reasonable costs are. This will be a sliding scale, it’s not all or nothing. So if you hit the cost-control target completely, you get the full two hundred cedis, but you may get one third, or whatever, depending on our business costs. I need you guys to pay attention to spending, okay?”
Nobody said anything. I was thinking this could possibly lead to shortcuts, possibly even dangerous ones when it came to car maintenance, but I kept my mouth shut. Jan probably had a formula for that.
“Finally, the last four hundred cedis will be tied to revenue. We’ll work with Adam to define some specific revenue targets and how to report on them daily—probably some evolution of the thirty-day trailing number. Maybe the bonus will be tied to revenue per battery as well as overall revenue, I don’t know.”
Silence.
“Well?” said Whit. “Like I said, we’re open to feedback.”
Nothing.
Whit was turning red. He grabbed a marker and jumped to the wh
iteboard, crossing a giant X through the whole schematic Jan had just written. “Or we can say forget it. I’ll just keep the three thousand cedis! Because I’m not hearing anything from you.”
Jan stepped in. “We need you guys to tell us what you think. This bonus plan represents about fifteen percent of your annual income. That’s considered quite an attractive bonus in the U.S., but we don’t know about in Ghana. Is that normal? Better than usual? Less than usual? We need you to tell us. Does this interest you at all?”
“I’m not looking for pats on the back,” Whit added. “I’m looking for constructive feedback.”
“If we get this bonus, you will have so many pats your back will be aching,” said Kevin.
Everybody laughed. “That sounds like an Akan proverb,” said Whit.
“It’s good,” said Kevin. “We’re not saying the bonus is not good. But it will remain to be seen if we can make these goals and numbers.”
“Well yes, that’s the whole point,” said Whit.
“Have you taken into account that our clients have very little money?” said Kevin.
“No!” said Whit emphatically. “What I mean by that is, these will be numbers that we have to hit or we’re out of business. So it doesn’t have anything to do with our clients’ spending power. We need to have a hundred agents with a hundred batteries each to start making a profit—and that’s with you guys, a staff of three. The bottom line is, we’ve gotta hit these numbers by the end of the year or we’re done. We pack it up. We’ve got to show to investors—and I include myself as the guy who has already invested a quarter of a million dollars into this business—that we can start up a regional branch that makes money in a year.”
“And the fact is,” said Jan, “Whit has done a lot of research into what our clients are spending on batteries, and they spend a lot—several cedis a month.”
“The whole country spends fifty million dollars, eighty million cedis, on batteries every year,” said Whit. “We have an offer that beats the competition hands down. Frankly I think that anyplace we are in business we should be grabbing one hundred percent of the market share. All of it.”
Jaws hit the table. Whit paused and looked around.
“Okay, let’s be generous and say we only get twenty-five percent, nationwide. That’s still a fifteen-million-dollar business in Ghana. A business that makes money and helps low-income families live better lives! We are doing something very different here, and you guys are leading it!”
At that point I thought Whit might strip down to tights and a cape, and leap off the veranda to save Koforidua.
Finally Rose spoke. “For me, I don’t take satisfaction from a bonus; I take it from not being bored on my job. But it’s good that we have it.”
“That’s fair enough, and a good point,” said Whit. “I think we should all feel proud and satisfied in our jobs. This is a country with thirty percent annual interest rates. Most businesses here have only one model: buy cheap, sell dear, move inventory quickly. It’s the only way they can profit with those interest rates. But we are building a completely different model. The goal this year is to prove we can do it in one place. The goal next year is replicability.”
4. Cronies
The bonus plan required cooperation, and getting everyone on the Burro team to cooperate could be complicated by ethnic differences. All three employees were from different regions and tribes, with different customs and languages. Ghanaians pride themselves on tolerance and rarely express ethnic prejudices openly. But the truth is, they think about them all the time, and when pressed they will gladly share:
“The Ewe, they are very suspicious,” said Kevin one day as we were driving the battery route. “They won’t buy anything until they are sure it is good. The Krobos, if they see their uncle or brother buying it, they will buy it. The Ashanti? Oh, they will buy it if it is good, but only because they make up their own mind.”
Kevin, of course, was Ashanti.
“Now the Ga,” he concluded, “they all have the big mouth.”
After Whit hired Kevin as his first Ghanaian employee, Charlie lobbied strongly for the hiring of Adam, an Ewe, for the accounting position. Fortunately for Whit, an equally qualified Ashanti candidate was not available for six weeks, allowing him to avoid the issue. But he and Jan had several discussions about whether it was right to consider ethnicity in hiring. Did it make sense to spread the jobs out equitably among ethnic groups? Or was it wrong and racist to even care? The issue was never settled, but Whit felt satisfied that his Ghanaian staff, accidentally or not, reflected a broad pool of ethnic groups.
Politics, as in national politics, could make for office tension as well. One day, again in the car with Whit and Kevin, I wondered out loud if there were any real ideological differences between the country’s two main parties. Whit answered no, but Kevin disagreed. “The NPP is more business-friendly,” he said. “They favor less taxes.”
“Well, that was certainly their campaign manifesto,” countered Whit, “but as a practical matter I don’t discern any substantive difference between the parties. It’s all about patronage, and not just in Ghana. I mean, hiring your cronies is how you stay in power. Breaking that cycle is a huge challenge. Somebody has to have the courage to step up to the plate and say it ends with us, but nobody has done that. I mean, Kufuor’s government gave thirty percent raises to state employees three weeks before leaving office.”
Indeed, there is virtually no accountability for government spending in Ghana. A 2004 report by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund found huge discrepancies between budgeted and actual expenditures. For example, from 2000 to 2003, the Ministry of Education spent 39 percent less money than budgeted on actual services, while spending 45 percent more on salaries. The situation in the Ministry of Health was even worse, with services receiving 67 percent less than budgeted, and salaries going overbudget by 76 percent. As Tony Killick of the Overseas Development Institute wrote in a recent paper on Ghana: “There is evidence of large leakage in allocated funds between their release from the centre and their arrival at the point of service delivery.”
Kevin laughed nervously at Whit’s mention of Kufuor’s vote-buying “raises.”
“You think that’s funny?” challenged Whit. “I don’t. Because it’s your money, and really, money that isn’t there. Money that could be paving these messed-up roads.” He swerved to dodge a pothole, paused, and took a long breath. “I think it’s scandalous.” Conversation dropped off.
5. Unknown
I walked to the immigration office in Koforidua’s ministries complex to pick up my passport, which I had to submit (along with twenty cedis) for a visa extension. It’s a queasy feeling to surrender your passport in a foreign country—“Come back in a week,” the stern-faced immigration lady told me—and especially troubling when you come back in a week and she says, “Come back in one more week.” But finally the day arrived. “Have a seat,” the same unsmiling lady said, motioning to a plastic patio chair. I thanked her and bowed, although her invitation troubled me. I had assumed I would simply grab my passport and hit the road, but apparently not. I crossed the tattered linoleum floor and sat down. The small, dusty room was crowded with six beat-up desks, at which sat six women, nearly identical in their starched green uniforms with gold epaulettes and shoulder braids. There was not a scrap of paperwork on any desk, and no work apparently in urgent need of attention.* Instead, all six women sat with their eyes glued to a TV in the corner, which was playing a Nigerian movie. The woman whose desk was closest to the TV presided over a sizable library of DVDs, suggesting that film appreciation was, in fact, the real work at hand.
It was midday and meltingly hot—sweat poured from my brow even though I sat utterly motionless—yet the overhead fan was not turning, was perhaps broken. One of the women took my “Document Retention Receipt” and left the office; now I had no passport and no proof of ever handing it over to this zombie bureau, but I tried to remain calm, if not co
ol.
I focused on the movie, a typical Nigerian potboiler. Most revolve around deceitful businessmen, crooked politicians, beautiful women in danger, and one misunderstood but honest man out to save the country, who invariably dies, usually slowly and after prolonged torture at the hands of corrupt cops, orchestrated by an evil shaman. This particular film was not breaking any new ground. Minutes passed, scenes changed. A couple was asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in a Mercedes-Benz. The immigration ladies were arguing about whether the dead woman was pregnant and by whom.
Finally my passport arrived. But instead of handing it over, the lady sat down at her desk and withdrew a large dog-eared ledger book that appeared to predate the Ashanti-Fante War of 1806. She opened my passport, turned to the ledger book, and started writing. And writing. And writing.
The movie plot thickened. There was a motorcycle crash, a man ended up in the hospital. His wife came to see him. “You shouldn’t do this to yourself,” she said to him. Still the passport lady wrote.
The movie ended. The credits rolled. I noticed that the character of “Deacon” was played by “Unknown,” which I found curious. I guess by the time they finished making the movie, they had forgotten all about that guy who played the deacon. Maybe he will turn up one day and identify himself. Maybe, like me, he was a man without any identity documents. Still the lady kept jotting in her passport ledger book. The woman with the DVD collection popped in a new movie. During this entire time, no one else in the office took any action that I would classify as work; in fact, never on my several visits to Immigration did I see any worklike action undertaken at all, other than that pertaining to my own visa. Finally the lady closed her ledger book and handed over my coveted passport. “Check it, please,” she said, “to make sure the extension is correct.”
6. Your Woman Has Spoken for You
Max Alexander Page 25