My life in Gantsi

Posted by Malaz on August 27th, 2008

It’s been 3 weeks since I have arrived in Gantsi. Life here is certainly different from Gabs and what I’m used to in Montreal. Gantsi is no different from other small towns in Africa, always a goat or cow walking down the street wherever you go. Roosters, they drive me crazy! I swear they crow 24 hours a day. It can be 5 in the afternoon or 2 in the morning, CUCUKOO! There are few panhandlers with most poverty on the outskirts of town and in the settlements. There are 2 large grocery stores and a good restaurant right next to work so I can get pretty much anything I need. Life is very slow out here, not that I mind that so much.

A typical weekday for me is getting up at 7am, way too early. Start work at 8, have lunch at the hotel restaurant, finish at 5, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, watch satellite TV, and then repeat 5 times a week. The weekends are something else though. I have a fellow Canadian who works here too and the staff at work are a great bunch so while it might sound boring, it has been a lot of fun.
Gantsi is a small town of 10 000 people and is considered to be the capital of the Kalahari. There are many San people (the Bushmen) here accounting for half the population. The story of the San people is remarkable. They are called the first peoples as they have been around for 15 000 years. Being hunters and gatherers there way of life has definitely changed now. I can only hope it’s for the better but they are still the most marginalized community in Botswana.

I work here at San Arts and Crafts. San Arts and Crafts (SAaC) is a wholesaler of traditional arts and crafts made by the San people. Their aim is to create more channels for the distribution of San crafts to bring more money back to San producers and communities. I am impressed by what they have done here. SAaC works with 7 other ngo’s to form the Kuru Family of Organisations. Collectively they work towards improving the lives of the San people. While there are many political issues and some bad blood between Kuru and the San people, they find a way to work together. What has impressed me the most from working in the crafts sector is to see the immediate impact of the work being done here.

This is how it works; the San make the crafts from materials donated by Kuru. Within a week or two someone from Kuru goes up to their isolated settlements and purchases the crafts from them, instant cash being injected into those communities. While those producing the crafts tend to be a minority in the village, there still is a dedinate and immediate impact by injecting cash into those communites. There are currently close to 800 craft producers working with Kuru. The opportunity definitely exists for increasing that number exponentially however the marketing channels are still lacking. Those crafts are then divided between a retail and wholesale distributor. The retail distributor sells the crafts to tourists passing through Gantsi. The wholesaler (SAaC) sells to buyers from across Botswana. With a long-term marketing volunteer working at SAaC presently they are exploring getting these crafts into South Africa, Europe, and the States. The biggest challenge is finding a reliable agent to distribute with and then high cost of shipping. Botswana is land locked so transporting goods is difficult and costly no matter what business you are in.

This system does work greatly while it does have its flaws. Kuru currently is dominated with ex-pats so the San have still not found their way into the upper ranks. What this means is they are highly dependant on the ex-pats making this initiative not truly sustainable. Cultural and political issues are dominant here and until the San are given more involvement at higher levels, this project is not sustainable and would disappear should the ex-pats ever leave.

However the system is really remarkable. The settlements participating in this project would otherwise have no means of bringing this economy into their communities. Of the few other craft producers I have seen and talked to elsewhere in Botswana and in Zambia this system doesn’t exist. I believe that introducing this type of system to other craft producers in other regions would have a similar impact. Bringing money and economy into remote regions where few opportunities exist. You can’t believe how many marginalized people in Africa depend on selling arts and crafts as a livelihood. Creating opportunities and channels for them to produce more and sell more can certainly help in aiding marginalized communities find a way to prosper and bring hope for the future.

So what has my work here entailed? I have been involved at an operational level. With a marketing volunteer present, SAaC wanted me to help manage and implement controls for their inventory, purchasing, and oreder fulfillment systems so when markeing increased demand, they would have a capacity for it. I have also been tasked with creating job descriptions and consultancy contracts for those working with SAaC daily.

Only outdated job descitpitons and expired contracts were in place, so this was definaelty needed. Plus a manager was hired, taking over as I left so his duites needed to be outlined. After using a collaborative approach I wrote up the descriptions and contracts to everyone’s satisfaction. They are to be submitted at the next board meeting where I am told they are sure to be accepted.

Often, volunteers are tasked with producing work and reports that would not be used once they leave. NGO’s are happy just to show on paper to their donors that they are brinigng in thses volunteers. Its unfortunate but then again most volunteers are young students with no work experience and a few years into university, I suppose its understandable. In fact many people I have talked to here are convinced the volunteer system does not work and often does more harm than good. After meeting many volunteers and NGO’s I am afraid this can be true for the majority of cases. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up hope. I am stilled convinced there can be a mechanism for bringin in masters students who would have a tremendous impact. These are skilled and knowledgeable people with years of work experience. The challenge is to match up the right people with the right organisations at the right time. My experience here has shown me this is possible and I will continue to work at making this program, the iCOP, into a reality. Giving other students the chance to gain what I have gained and help marginalized people benefit from the great skills they possess.

Getting back to my work, I was happy to know the documents I created will be used. I did not come out here to be patronized or marginalised. Maybe a young kid would be happy just for the experience to be out here but I wanted my work to matter. The second part of my mandate was the creation of inventory management systems. Thankfully, a software was already in place and a system was being used, at least I wasn’t working from scratch. I created extra layers of controls and continued to stress to everyone the importance of balancing manually inventory controls with those in the software. By being more accurate and creating more controls, they would be able to vastly reduce billing and shipping errors and reduce the heavy amount of lost inventory stock every year. After much work, I balanced manual and inventory counts and implemented the system. Everyone was made aware of the new inventory polices, from when a product arrived in the door to when it was shipped to the customer. They were all eager to use it hoping a little extra work now would save much more in the long run.

I feel my time here was a success. I had addressed priority issues and now the rest was up to them. I met with the new manager and it was up to him to make sure that this system was being used and they didn’t fall back into old habits. You do what you can in a short time but in the end, it’s their responsibility to use what they’ve been given. I must faith they will practice what I preached. Otherwise my work would have been pointless, but I refuse to believe that.

So what’s next? I finish here in a few days and then I’ll do a week of travelling. Either in Botswana or Namibia, there’s still plenty more for me to see. Finally Paris for 2 days and back home.

So enjoy the pictures that I’ve put up and I’ll see you all soon.

Posted in SWB