The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (22 page)

Duncan agreed, and we discussed how we would approach the next weeks of work. We'd speak with everyone we could find, go out to the rural areas, meet farmers, consult with the government ministers, and be as fair and as thoughtful as we could. We were committed to doing the right thing for the Gambian people. That was our deal.

We spent a week or so in Banjul, located on an island at the mouth of the Gambia River and connected to the mainland by a bridge. The city's streets were always full of traders hawking their wares in front of twostory buildings with arched passageways that reminded me of some of Bombay's commercial streets. Women sold colorful batik fabrics and gold and silver jewelry, baskets, and vegetables, often under makeshift tents that shielded them from the hot sun. But for all of the petty trading, agriculture was what sustained the majority of people in the country.

As Duncan and I were leaving the capital to visit rural farms, we passed a row of eight women sitting by the roadside, selling oysters in the hot sun. They'd gathered them in the mangroves, a jumble of roots and plants along the banks of the Gambia River that created enormous swamps that held not only debris, but fresh oysters, too.

"One dalasi for a lid of delicious oysters," a skinny woman yelled at our car, her face breaking into a vivacious smile. Now I was definitely back in Africa, where, despite the crushing poverty that faces the majority of people, there is a sense of boundless enthusiasm that never fails to infuse me with energy.

In one of the villages, we met Haddy, an unforgettable, irrepressible fertilizer retailer probably in her forties, who knew the local farmers and understood the psychology of selling. Her massive body was draped in a deep purple, flowing robe, and her hands were adorned with huge silver and gold rings. She sat regally on an overstuffed bag of fertilizer and was filled with the confidence that comes from knowing more than everyone else about something-or at least believing you do. After 19 years of hard work, Haddy had built an irrefutably successful business. In one day, I learned more from this impressive saleswoman than I had in months of listening to experts in offices.

I suggested that my colleagues at the Bank wanted her opinion on their proposal to provide loans for inputs like fertilizer through large development and commercial banks.

"Nonsense!" Haddy explained. "First, we are living too far away from the banks, and second, we don't trust them. Further, most banks don't want to deal with farmers like us. They just want the big ones. The small farmers come to a retailer like me and borrow the money they need to plant and fertilize the harvest. You see, they have no cash and so they rely on credit until the harvest comes, and then they pay back."

"But how can you count on farmers repaying?" I asked.

"Because this is a small area and we know everyone. If I had more cash myself, then I could lend even more to the farmers. My credit to you would be strong. So you see? You have to bet only on Haddy, and I will take the responsibility for making sure the others repay me so that I can repay you."

"How do we know you are a fair seller?" I asked.

"You must ask the farmers and see what they say," she responded. "I want to help change my country. And I will serve it better than those big banks."

I didn't doubt her. And at least this was a starting point.

This idea made sense because it relied on the strength of the local people rather than on the largesse of foreign consultants who would never have to reach into their own pockets. Here was a chance to build on something that was already working. After speaking with other farmers and local distributors, we wrote up our proposal and readied ourselves to present it to the project coordinating committee of the Department of Agriculture. We proposed developing local credit and distribution systems to address the problems of local farmers. The idea was simple-and we believed it could work.

Down an open-air hallway, we met the woman who headed the committee in her stark white office. Draped in an enormous dress of screaming yellow and defensive blue, she sat behind a wooden desk, her eyes shaded by a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. She made me think of a vulture who considered us a mere distraction from the more political pursuits of her day.

Before I could get through my opening statement, the chairperson cut us off.

"Why would you establish a private retail network for women?" she asked curtly. "You will miss the women who are among the poorest of the poor."

I explained that we were attempting to promote the private sector in a way that reached poor farmers. If we could find a way to help the market actually work for poor farmers, then they could make their own investments in things like fertilizers and seeds and repay when the harvest came in. They wouldn't be waiting for an agency to give them things. I talked about needing a mind-set beyond charity to reach poor farmers: The farmers themselves were market driven and deserved solutions that could help them sustain themselves for years.

The woman missed the point of whether we would work through local distributors or develop banks altogether. She didn't believe in lending to the poor at all. We were back at square one. "You aren't helping the poorest farmers by giving loans to women already in business. They cannot be so poor if they have businesses."

I tried to explain that supporting women already in business could actually be good for many people. Besides, I told her, the businesswomen we were talking about were not wealthy by any means.

"The poor need our help, not businesswomen. Poor women farmers cannot afford to repay your loans. It is only when they get more money that they will be richer."

You couldn't argue with the latter part of her sentence, but I didn't know how to get out of the circular logic: Whatever I said fell on deaf ears.

"Just look at the track record of these giveaway programs," I protested. "Broken mills, lower production levels of rice after 20 years of work and money. This can't be right," I continued, maybe with too much selfrighteousness, for I could feel my growing anger. "The only way this will work for the farmers is if they own it themselves, if they can see their own lives getting better because of their efforts and ability to control their own futures and not have to wait around for the government."

"You don't know this country," she reprimanded me.

"No," I agreed, "I don't, though I have been listening to farmers."

"Well, it is most clear that you don't know Gambia," she said and shut her book. The meeting was over.

We had an ally in the Department of Agriculture, and we continued to push for the fertilizer program. We also tried reducing the $15 million proposal to a $1 million grant that would be an experiment in building a selfsustained fertilizer distribution system, but it was ultimately rejected. Too much money and time had gone into crafting the larger proposal, and a smaller one couldn't be justified, apparently. I never saw the final loan document, but I believe that many of the original initiatives were reinstated, though no one could explain to me how they had a chance of success.

Although my experience at the World Bank was a frustrating one, I was glad to have had it, to have met a number of extraordinary individuals, and to have gained a better understanding of how incentives to move money out the door can lead to initiatives that can be damaging to local economies. And it reaffirmed my belief in creating structures with the right incentives for success and in finding real business leaders like Haddy and giving them the tools to serve their fellow citizens. I left eager to learn better management skills at Stanford, for I was certain that understanding business was fundamental to building systems for change.

After a solo drive across the United States, I found myself walking through the halls of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, feeling as if I'd landed in another universe entirely. Kigali made Palo Alto feel like a loaf of Wonder Bread. At the same time, I suddenly found myself with people who spoke my language, came to meetings on time, and made things happen. I loved the ease of it all and had never felt more privileged in my entire life.

Still, I longed for the colors of Africa, the smells of cooking over an open fire early in the morning, the sight of the purple rain marching across the land. I missed the simple way that people embraced one another; the way they asked about your family, your day, your health before discussing business; the way children waved their hands back and forth, like little Japanese fans aflutter. I missed bargaining for everything. I missed the optimism and resiliency of so many Africans I knew. I missed finding beauty in everyday things. I even missed the rotten roads in Rwanda, as my friend Ginette had predicted as she drove me to the airport in Kigali on bumpy, muddy streets full of potholes.

Most of all, I missed feeling useful.

"I'm supposed to be an anthropologist, so what am I doing studying vector analysis and the Black-Scholes theory?" I asked a friend.

He reminded me that I'd come to learn the skills I needed to change the world-at least that was my mantra. The developing world needed management skills. It needed people who knew how to start and build companies, not just people with good intentions. It was growing clear to me that those who sought power and money made the rules; yet power alone could corrupt and corrode. "Power without love," Martin Luther King Jr. said in one of his last speeches, "is reckless and abusive," and, he continued, "love without power is sentimental and anemic."

The world needed both-I had seen this over and over in my time abroad. I wanted to gain the confidence-and skills-to make that fusion work.

The question was how to put the combination of power and love into action. My professors and fellow students were comfortable speaking about power and money. Love and dignity, on the other hand, were words people were often embarrassed to say out loud, or so it felt. There had to be a way to combine the power, rigor, and discipline of the marketplace with the compassion I'd seen in so many of the programs aimed at the very poor. Capitalism's future, it seemed to me then-and much more so now-rests on how much creativity and room for inclusion it can tolerate.

Before each semester at Stanford, professors give a preview of their upcoming classes to aid students in course selection. At one session, a tall, graceful elderly man in a gray suit and a fedora stood up to speak. He looked like he had been an athlete in his youth. His figure was lithe, his step easy. He carried a sense of gravitas that made it impossible not to listen to what he had to say.

"Why do civilizations rise and fall?" he asked, moving his hand in an elegant arc above his head, and then paused.

I thought of the Taj Mahal, of the contrasts I'd seen in different countries. I wanted to talk to him about them.

"Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike, into their eighties and nineties?"

He paused again, and I was hooked; I felt he was speaking to me directly. Though I had no idea who this man was, I knew that he was going to play a role in my life.

That afternoon, I went to the professors' offices and found his name on the door: Professor Emeritus John Gardner. I knocked and heard a voice tell me to come in. John was sitting at his desk, hat off, jacket still on, reading a paper he put aside when he saw me. I stammered through my introduction and explained to him why what he had said had resonated so clearly with me. He'd been talking about the kind of person I wanted to be. I was craving more discussion about just those issues and, well, might he ever have the time to talk to me about some of them?

The room was quiet, and he stared at me with the kindest eyes I'd ever seen. "My dear," he said, "of course, we can talk. Sit down. But first I have to ask you if you knew you were wearing two different earrings?"

I told him I did, that I thought it made people think for a moment, and that might be a good thing-didn't he think so?

He laughed, and I sat down. We didn't stop talking until he died more than a dozen years later.

It was only after my first meeting with John that I learned he'd been secretary of health, education, and welfare under Lyndon Johnson. After resigning from the Johnson administration as one of the most powerful government officials in the country, he founded a grassroots citizens' organization, Common Cause, at age 56. John Gardner understood what self-renewal was all about-he lived it.

He also founded the Independent Sector as an umbrella group for nonprofit organizations; the White House Fellows to promote leadership in the young in Washington, DC; and the National Civic League to encourage citizen participation. Everything John did was about releasing human energies at all levels of society. His greatness came not from any title, but from the way he lived his life, with a rare combination of vision and drive, humility and grace.

John never stopped learning. I have a vivid image of him standing at the front of the class with pen in hand as he took notes each week on what the 10 people in the seminar had to say. That practice certainly made me pay more attention and listen carefully. If he were writing down what my classmates were saying, then there was probably wisdom in it for me, as well. John spoke about the civil rights movement in the United States, about how social movements need both insiders and outsiders to make change happen, about how important it is to learn to talk to one another across lines of difference-ethnic lines, religious lines, class lines, ideological lines.

After classes, I would sit in his office for hours. I did independent studies with him as well, learning about leadership and starting organizations not for personal profit, but to benefit a greater community. He always had time to talk, whether it was about major social movements or the importance of living with integrity, of treating everyone with the respect they deserve. And he taught just by being who he was. I would sometimes see him on campus, talking with a former secretary of state. John would call me over and give me a hug, even if I tried to walk by without him noticing, not wanting to interrupt his important matters. As he once said of a friend of his, John made the world better just by being in it.