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Published: June 30th 2008
No, that title doesn't mean I have started eating red meat again now that I'm in Ghana. It's actually a slang word that today's story revolves around.
There is a brand of candy-coated peanuts here called Burger that are quite tasty, and used to be made abroad. If you know Ghana, importing a peanut product makes no sense, since they produce a ton of peanuts here. It would be like Iowa calling Massachusetts for some corn shipments. Thankfully they stopped making the Burger-brand peanut snacks abroad a few years ago, saving transport costs and keeping the jobs and income in-country. But they didn't start doing this before Burger had become slang for a foreigner with deep pockets.
So I should have been suspicious when the loan officer that has been escorting our research teams to the different communities each day started calling me "Burger" a few days ago (they pronounce it "Bogga" for soem reason.) This happened because I've been handling the expense account, so it seems like I am always paying for something, which plays into the stereotype of a wealthy foreigner even more, even when the money is actually the organization's, not mine, and has to be accounted for or I pay the difference, just like any expense accoutn would work.
Over the past few days I grew suspicious of our escort, and the taxi fares and cost of sodas and biscuits for interviewees that the guy was quoting me, but he always came back with a receipt, and how was I to know what things cost in every random village, so I kept my suspicions as a lingering doubt. But today he had to leave early and go back to the office without us, and requested I give him 4 Ghanaian Cedis ($4 US) in "TNT", which is slang for transport expenses, to go from here to Techiman. What he did not know was that I had traveled this same route last Friday by myself, and knew it was actually 2.2 cedis, or 1.8 lessthan he demanded, and even worse, that was the rate they had charged a foreigner! So I had my evidence, but I kept quiet and gave him the money, but I was smiling inside, because you can be assured he will no longer be fetching the sodas (I will do that), and my colleague who I trust immensely will be negotiating the taxi rides, and paying for them as well. I can't wait for his look of surprise tomorrow. More than the fact that he was trying to take advantage of what he saw as a wealthy and clueless Burger is that the money he is skimming doesn't affect me, it affects the people and communities the organization serves, so he is in essence robbing from people with hardly anything whose communities he works in.
This leads me to a broader point. The field work has been amazing, and I am starting to see some trends in our data that are turning into concrete product ideas for my final recommendations. We are also having fun and the studetns and colleagues I am surrounded by are incredible surces for ideas and new approaches. The only hard part has actually been the money, and not just because of this unscrupulous loan officer.
We are offering a compensation to participants in our focus groups, since the focus groups last up to 2 hours, and I always have had an issue with people who do studies and act like others' time isn't valuable except to serve their needs, especially when it is in low-income communities. Of course, we don't tell the participants beforehand, since we don't want people volunteering for the wrong reasons, and we handle it as quietly as possible, but there have been a few times when we have stayed a whole day in a community working with multiple groups, that word has gotten around about the compensation before we've taken off to a new community. This has created problems with people demanding to be in a focus group so they can get some money, and with the people who did the individual interviews (which last less than 15 minutes) getting mad when they find out their neighbor got money for being in the focus group, while they just got some refreshments. Fortunately for me, I am somewhat immune to the harassment, due to the language barrier, but in one town the student researchers were getting harassed to the point that we just packed up and left as soon as the data was gathered and raced to the taxi station without a goodbye.
Anways, there is no way to resolve this issue, it just comes with the desire to compensate people fairly, and I'll gladly deal with that added stress in exchange for the people we interview feeling like they are appreciated and respected. But the first case is clearly something else, and needs to be addressed. I may be an Obruni, but I am definitely not a Burger.
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dad
non-member comment
great blog! I'd be interested to hear what ideas you generate out of the focus groups. very warm and humid here--the growth in flowers and vegatables just in the last week has been amazing. dad