The last few weeks have been largely uneventful in village. This is a good thing because uneventful = non stressful. I’ve said before that when I’m in village I’m about as relaxed as I’ve ever been. I can get plenty of sleep, I can eat as much as I want, I go for daily bike rides through the countryside, and for the most part there isn’t all that much work.

Although it is true that I have to do all the domestic work chez moi, work such as fetching water from the pump or well, doing the laundry by hand, and so forth, this also tends to be easier because of all the petites (the word for children in the local language is literally the same word as small, so people tend to use the French word for small when talking about kids) around. In Benin there may not be an app for that, but there is definitely a petit. I still do my laundry by hand, although many children have offered to help, but getting water from the well or going to the pump? Yeah, I’ll have the kids help me with that as much as they want.

Anyways, the downside of having a fairly uneventful couple of weeks is that I don’t really have much to share as far as stories go. We’re starting to settle into classes, and last week was midterms for the students. I’m happy to say that my students’ grades tend to be higher than their other, Brian-less counterparts. This is either because of my flawless teaching skills and visionary techniques, or because I hold their hands more than other teachers.

So, given that I’ve been reading a lot of books about economics and development, I’ve decided that this post will be dedicated to some factors holding back development in Benin and whatever anecdotes or insights I may have to offer. As you may or may not know, Benin is one of the least developed countries in the world, with a human development index score puts it 161st out of 182 countries according to the UN’s 2009 release. This puts is below Haiti, the lowest scoring country in the Americas, for comparison.

Lack of Infrastructure

The first reason I can think of is a lack of infrastructure. It is very difficult to get any sort of product to market, and even more so to get any kind of product onto the world market. Benin (and Africa overall for that matter) lacks the navigable rivers that are found in Europe and the United States.

I’m going to take this opportunity to go on a sidebar on the importance of geography to understanding how our world works. As some of you may know, ever since my Cinderella run to the state geography bee in middle school I’ve been a big geography guy.

For many people, though, geography tends to be something you learn about in K-12 schooling, and then something you promptly never think about again. This is a mistake, geography literally shapes our world. They say that the simplest answer is usually the best, and it is hard to get a simpler answer than what geography has to offer.

So, for instance, the geographical barriers Africa faces (the lack of navigable rivers, a giant desert separating the north from the south, thick, at times impenetrable, rain forests, and so on) help explain a lot about Africa.

Now, when it comes to Africa and geography, a lot of people point out how Africa’s borders where drawn by European diplomats on a map in Berlin, with no regard for ethno-linguistic or other factors, and therefore at times separating ethnic groups between entities and combining adversarial groups into entities.

This certainly has been a factor in Africa’s development, although I’m not sure how defining of a factor it has been. While it explains some of the problems in the some cases, I don’t really think it really tells the whole story the way some people think it does. Conflict between civilizations and cultures isn’t primordial, and in the vast majority of cases rival groups cooperate more than anything else.

In Benin there is a tremendous amount of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, and it hasn’t really led to any type of conflict. I may have mentioned earlier about how the supposedly murderous secret religious societies clear off the streets by 5 A.M. or so to allow Muslims to go to Morning Prayer.

Anyways, when it comes to how colonization affected geography, I would like to draw attention to another, often overlooked effect. I admittedly stole this from a book I read a year or so ago, unfortunately the title escapes me now.

Basically, most African capitals are either on the coast of a country, or along a country’s border with another country. Colonial capitals were placed on the coast for an obvious reason; it was easier for colonial authorities to reach the coast than it is for them to go inland. Why got miles into African territory when you can just place the capital on the coast where ships can easily get to it?

The downside of this is that while it was convenient for colonial powers, it often times wasn’t convenient for a weak, post-colonial state. Basically the idea is that it is easier for a state to project state power and capacity the closer you get to the capital. The further from the capital you are, the more difficult it is for the state to project power of the population, meaning there is more of a vacuum for insurrection or rebellion or what have you.

According to this line of thought, the more centrally located a capital is, the better, as it maximizes the area closest to the capital and minimizes areas distant from the capital. If a capital is along the coast or the border of a country, then it will be more difficult to project authority to the other side of the country.

Now, I’m not sure how much of an effect this really has on things, and whether it is really a meaningful point, but it is an interesting one. Some African countries, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and I think Tanzania come to mind, have moved their capitals further inland to a more central location.

Admittedly Cote D’Ivoire did it because the new capital was the President’s hometown, but Nigeria did do it in an effort to create a more neutral national capital. It’s kind of hard to draw too many conclusions from these changes though, seeing as how few they are and how recently they were done, although Cote D’Ivoire has had several bouts of civil conflict since the move.

Anyways, back to Benin and the rivers/transport, the Oueme is the main river in Benin, and it is not really navigable upstream. After a quick glance at the map, it appears that no city in the interior of Benin is located on a river. This means that all transport needs to be done on land, requiring roads or railways. For the most part, Benin lacks both. Virtually no railway exists, and the roads are generally riddled with potholes (the size you can fit a car into), and are in poor condition.

And then sometimes there just aren’t any roads. I often think of my village as an example. My village is right next to the head of the commune (think county chair I guess), but is located off of the national highway. We are connected to the commune head, and from there to the highway, by a dirt road. While this is something, and you do frequently see semis moving back and forth between the highway, and us it is slow going.

A couple of weekends ago I met up with another Peace Corps volunteer to go on a bike ride to Idadjo, a village deeper into the interior of the country from me, and according to my map it is where the road ends in the interior of the country.

So we left my house at about 8 in the morning to try and avoid the heat, and started moving west. It’s about 20 kilometers to Idadjo so we figured it would take an hour and a half or so to get there.

Idadjo has long been a spot I’ve wanted to visit. They say you can see the Oueme from Idadjo, and it supposedly has large, exposed veins of marble that you can literally walk up to and pick up a chunk of off the ground. Some of villagers were telling me that there has been some interest from foreign companies to quarry the marble sell it on the world market, but that the local villagers balked at how much money was being offered (the picture locals paint of the people in Idadjo is that they are lazy and greedy, a poor combination).

Five or six kilometers west of my house we ran into a small river, and like a game of Oregon Trail, we had to ford it on our bikes. Here is the first reason why the hypothetical marble in Idadjo could not, at present, be developed as a natural resource. I doubt anybody would seriously invest in a resource that involves fording a river to get at.

But if that wouldn’t stop development, then the lack of any road after the river would surely do it. The road doesn’t literally stop, but the rest of the way to Idadjo goes from being what we would call a dirt road, to a dirt path. It’s wide enough for one bicycle or motorcycle going one direction single file. There is no way at present that any type of truck could go on that road.

Eventually we turned around before reaching Idadjo because the trip was taking longer than anticipated, owing in part to the poor condition of the path (there was a lot of loose sand, think riding a bike at the beach).

The cost of transport is a legitimate barrier to development in Benin. It’s difficult to get any type of product to a regional market, much less the global market. I’ve highlighted the lack of transport infrastructure, but the lack of electricity in large parts of the country, as well as the lack of access to clean water for many people, are still other examples.

Disease

So I’ve always understood at least conceptually how disease holds back development. If you’re sick you aren’t engaging in any type of productive economic activity. The more a person is sick, the less they can work, and so on and so forth. But in the last couple of weeks I’ve started to gain a greater appreciation for the damage sickness can cause.

Every Monday morning the school has a flag raising ceremony to start the day. All the kids line up around the flag in neat lines (it’s vaguely militaristic) and sing the national anthem while the flag is raised. Then the school director typically gives a short speech.

Three weeks ago, we had our flag raising ceremony as usual. But immediately after the ceremony while the kids were shuffling out to go to their classrooms, one student just collapsed.

I was one of the first teachers to notice and made my way over to him to see if there was anyway I could help. It was at this point I heard another teacher suggest that he was possessed by a spirit, and I’m happy to say that my Beninese counterpart responded by insisting that he was not possessed but sick, and that he needed to go to the hospital.

Illness, particularly malaria, is such a part of life here that most people expect they will get sick with it at least once every year. About two weeks ago I stopped by my carpenter to order the last of the furniture for my house. He told me that it would all be finished by the next Sunday.

The weekend came and went and no one showed up, so I dropped by for a visit the following Tuesday. Apparently he was sick all weekend, but assured me that he was just finishing up on my stuff and would be around later to drop it off. A few more days go by without him visiting, so I drop by again to check up on my order. He apparently was sick again and hadn’t been in for days again.

A similar thing recently happened with my tailor in village. Something that should normally have taken two days instead took two weeks because of sickness (presumably malaria). Now, I’ve come to expect delays like these for a variety of reasons, and really am not bothered by them usually, but these are whole weeks at a time where people are unable to work.

These are just a few examples, but at any given moment I know someone in village who is sick with something. It’s disheartening because most disease here is either preventable or easily treatable (malaria included), but because of a lack of medical resources and knowledge they still ravage the village.

No Savings

Increasingly I think this is one of, if not the, biggest barrier to development here. The idea of saving money is almost completely foreign to people in villages.

Ever since I came to Benin I’ve been amazed by the half finished buildings. Everywhere you look there is a building without a roof, or without a floor, or that is missing a wall, et cetera. On the trip to Idadjo we passed a large, half-completed Catholic church. They are almost always teeming with grass and plants, and with wild animals living in them.

For the longest time I always thought they were projects that people just abandoned halfway through and have been left to return to nature. Not the case. That’s is just how people build things here, piecemeal. They never have enough money to build the whole thing at once, and instead build it little by little.

Now, I’m sure you’re saying, wouldn’t it be cheaper and quicker to build it all at once? Why don’t they just save up and finish it in one shot? Well, that would be nice, but would never happen.

First off, there are no banks or any other financial institution to put money in; to save up money would mean literally keeping bills of money in their house. The bank I use for the Peace Corps is a two-hour trip by bush taxi each way, for most people opening an account is not in the cards.

But the main reason people don’t save money is because it is socially unacceptable. If you are saving money, and there is someone else who needs it, then you are considered greedy, and word will quickly spread. Typically how money works among friends is that if you have money and I need money, then you will lend it to me (which basically means give since there isn’t any expectation of being paid back). When the roles are reversed, then I will be expected to loan it to you.

People don’t save money because as soon as they do, people will be asking for it, and culturally if you have extra money, you are expected to give it out to someone in need who is asking for it. Therefore people spend money as quickly as they get it to avoid people asking for it.

This lack of savings means that there are no investments, that there is no way to really expand the capital stock, and no way to get credit (since there is no functioning banking system where people place their savings). My carpenter has one of the only saw machines in town, but due to the lack of savings/credit it would be very difficult for him to buy a second one and expand his operations.

Part of the bigger problem here is that all businesses are destined to be too small to really take advantage of economies of scale, since it is so difficult to save money or take out a loan, expand the capital stock, and grow your business.

Informal Economy

Pretty much the entire economy in village is informal or “black market.” Nobody registers their small cafeteria, roadside stand, or boutique with the government, much less pays taxes. This is probably at least in part because of how long it would take to actually do things on the up and up, and how expensive it would be. Even if a person wanted to formally register their business, most people wouldn’t know who to actually go to (neither do I for that matter).

Anyways, everyone I do business with is unquestionably a part of the informal economy. Most of them run their operations out of their house, or a small stand on the side of the road.

Having a large informal economy hurts development in two ways. First, it means a smaller tax base for the government, making it harder for the government to invest in new roads or hospitals or the like.

It also, however, reduces the incentive to expand. Normally one would say that making money is good, so if you can expand to make more of it that would be even better. But if expanding makes you more likely to grab the attention of a tax administrator or local official looking to get cut in, then maybe you’ll think twice.

Corruption

People typically blame poor economic performance in Africa on bad governance and corruption. Personally, I don’t think it’s as big of a factor as people make it out to be. Sure, there is corruption in Benin (although I haven’t been hit up for a bribe or seen any kind of corruption that you wouldn’t also see in the United States), but it is not any more corrupt than China or a number of the so-called Asian Tigers.

That said there still is a lot of corruption in Africa and Benin. Typically you see it in hiring practices. For many positions, particularly salaried ones, it really isn’t what you know, but whom you know. Then again, the same thing can often be said in the US.

The more troubling type of corruption, however, is bribery, specifically when bribes are expected to perform services that are supposed to be free. My Beninese counterpart, another English teacher at my school, is actually a current college student at the national university. He recently submitted his thesis, but professors typically won’t consider a thesis until you pay a bribe. My counterpart refuses to pay this bribe, and instead took a teaching job hoping that eventually they’ll consider his thesis without him paying a bribe.

Similarly, I think I’ve also mentioned how in bush taxis the price of bribing police at security checkpoints is built into the price of the ticket.

So these are a few of the major barriers to development that I have seen in my experience here. A lot of these see causality going in both directions, however. Meaning that the country is undeveloped because it lacks infrastructure, but it also lacks infrastructure because it is undeveloped and lacks the resources to build infrastructure. Or that corruption causes a lack of development, and a lack of development causes corruption.

There are a number of other things I could talk about, but by this point I’m sure I’ve lost most of my readers.

That’s all for now, I’ll try to have some hot and fresh stories for next time.