Sunshine

[Begun May 1, 2007]

Seen "Blood Diamond"? Before heading to Benin last month, I watched an obviously illegal rip (the only kind around here). I was thoroughly entertained right up until Leonardo DiCaprio skewered Jennifer Connolly for being one of those bleeding-heart-types: "You people are all the same. You come here with your laptops, your malaria medicine, and your tiny packets of hand sanitizer and think you can make a difference." I squirmed...with the instant defensiveness and resigned queasiness that indicates someone has pegged your deepest fear. "Check, check, check...and check," I thought. "What am I doing?"

The short answer is this: the Kalale district of Benin is over 100km from paved roads, with no grid electricity, no running water, and no communications. It's a predominantly agricultural area and the district has a terrible malnutrition problem (estimates hover at 40%), because growing during the hot dry season is incredibly difficult. It's simply too costly to run generators to pump water from the wells for irrigation. The alternative -- women transporting basin after basin of water on their heads and spreading it by hand -- is insufficient for proper market garden agriculture. So, at the request of a local organization, we've decided to use the most abundant resource here -- the sun -- to address the problem. We're going to install solar-powered pumps for drip irrigation and clean water supply, and solar panels to electrify public spaces in the villages (community centers, street lights, schools, clinics). We think it's a comprehensive intervention that will address a whole host of development issues here in a sustainable way -- economically, socially, environmentally.

We're starting with two test villages and two "control" villages this year. Then we'll refine and work our way up to all 44 villages in the district. On top of the electrification itself, we're going to try to measure the impact of this project in a scientific and comprehensive manner never done before, through village and farmer surveys, market monitoring, and measurement of environmental indicators. And then there's all the capacity-building in association with this. We believe that a good development project leaves the initial development workers unemployed after a few years...and so we're training local horticulturalists, electricians, administrators.

Still, Leo's in my head. It's the free market v. aid debate and it wakes me up at night. The development economists' question is: why do this particular project? Why not take the entire $252,000 budget, and -- instead of buying solar panels, drip irrigation systems, and street lights -- just dump it right next to the well in the center of each village? Which would have a greater overall impact? It's a killer question, and there have certainly been some terrible development projects over the years. The very ambiguous legacy of aid, especially in Africa, is enough to make one wonder.

Is there a right answer? It's hard to know. But I do know this: the woman who tells me that she'll send her children to school with the money she'll make and the time they'll all save not having to haul water...that woman wouldn't see a single cent of the money if it were dropped in the center of town. So we march on.