Why We Fight: Fanny Balauti

I’m in southern Malawi today, where I have been participating in a review of some of Habitat’s programs. As I mentioned in the post about Ghana, Habitat for Humanity has a number of different ways that they work internationally, as opposed to the traditional interest-free mortgage loan that is the hallmark of Habitat in the US. One of those programs that is mostly exclusive to Africa is the Vulnerable Group Housing program, also known as the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Program, because in most cases the program works with orphans who are victims of HIV/Aids.

What Habitat does for these children is give them a house. It is usually small, and sometimes they have to help in the building process by carrying water or sand to the building site, but we give them the house – no loan payback or anything else. We also build a toilet (pit latrine), and provide some other services like training in wills, in malaria prevention and we provide them with treated mosquito nets. Habitat also works with other partner agencies to provide health and psychological support, and other things like fruit trees.

I spent the day meeting three house recipient families and interviewing them about their experiences with Habitat as part of our program review. Often the children have been adopted into extended family networks, or they may still have a living parent, but sometimes the household is run by the oldest living child. This is something that I knew existed, but I wasn’t ready for it when I met Fanny Balauti this morning for my first interview. When I first was introduced to Fanny, I knew that she was one of the children that lived in the house, but I did not realize at first that she was the head of household until the Habitat manager that I was with started the interview. She looked to be no older than 15, although, when I asked, she said she was 20. Both of her parents had died of Aids, and she was left alone to care for her 4 younger brothers and sisters.

Fanny

Although she had relatives all around in the community, she never received or receives any help from them. Her parents left a plot of land with a mud hut that had a leaky roof on it, and nothing else. She is very grateful to Habitat for the house that was given to her and her siblings because they used to spend a lot of time re-thatching the roof or recovering from their possessions getting soaked every time it rained. Now she has more time to tend her garden, tend the one acre of corn she has planted, and to do piece work on farms in the community to provide for the family. She has managed to keep her younger siblings in school (all of them are primary school age) although she dropped out after 8^th grade. She actually manages to make ends meet for her family on 20 cents a day. That’s right – her total monthly income is about $6.00 a month. (Development organizations that work for the “Poorest of the Poor” talk about serving people that make less than $1.25 a day – Fanny earns less than 25% of that standard)

Fanny really impressed me – not only by the obvious hard work that she does every day to take care of her younger brothers and sisters, but by the strength of will and character that came out during the interview. She has volunteered to help cook for visiting Habitat groups, and she expressed a willingness to help other families with construction of a new house – even though no one helped her – because she knew first-hand how important it would be to that family, and that she would need to show the same love to others that was shown to her.

After the interview I was to do an inspection of the construction of the house. We had been sitting on her front porch while we talked, and she showed me inside. The house was built well – it was not unlike a Habitat house that I lived in for three years in Zambia, except for one thing. There was almost nothing inside. There were two mosquito nets hanging from the rafters in the two bedrooms. There were two, single, 2 ½ inch-thick foam rubber mattresses that had been given them by another agency, a few clothes, and a few pots and pans and a small bag of corn meal in the corner. And that was it. No furniture, no radio, no candles or lantern (no electricity), no stools – nothing. The old house which is partially falling down is used as a kitchen – nothing. They had absolutely nothing, except a goat that was left by a family that had moved away – in an arrangement where if the goat had any babies fanny would get half of them in exchange for taking care of it. That’s all.

Fanny on her porch with a friend. The hut on the left (which is partially collapsed) is where she and her siblings lived before. it is now used as a kitchen (they cook over open flames) and the goat lives in the collapsed part.

I have seen poor, rural African poverty, but this just blew me away. This was by far the poorest family I have ever met, but even so this young woman had strength and a spirit of perseverance that was almost difficult to view, and gratefulness to Habitat that made me appreciate the fact that I am associated with this organization. I know my words don’t do this experience justice – but the title of this post comes from the TV series and book, “A Band of Brothers” – specifically from the episode near the end of the Second World War when the American troops encountered the Nazi death camps and in the process of liberating them, the troops realized what they had been fighting for.

Today, I realized what I am fighting for…..

Ghana

At the end of November I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Ghana for a Habitat – sponsored workshop for Habitat workers from all over Africa and the Middle East. The workshop was focused primarily on Housing Micro-finance and the delivery of Construction technical Assistance (CTA) to both Micro-lending institutions and their clients. This is a new field, where basically Habitat is partnering up with small banks who give small loans to poor people that want to improve their housing conditions – for a small fee, the Habitat technician will help the loan recipient with plans, estimates or even locating a builder, while helping the lender by verifying the need for a housing loan and verifying that not only was the loan spent for the intended work but that the work was done well. In this way, for much less money spent, Habitat serves many more people, and Habitat serves people who normally wouldn’t qualify for a normal Habitat full house loan. Currently Habitat is doing this (in various ways) in 6 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and we hope to expand the program to many more.

An addition of a septic tank and dual-pit latrine (one side remains dormant and the other used, switching out each six months, at the end of which the dormant side has turned to fertilizer with the aid of some chemicals)

This is the main program that I am working with, and the desire to expand the program was why I was hired. It is not the “traditional habitat” that I was familiar with, but I am pretty excited about it and the potential for working with thousands of families in an area each year vs. only at the most building 100 houses is a very exciting prospect. Habitat’s stated goal is to see that every family has a decent home to live in all over the world – and to even begin to think about reaching that goal we have to start finding ways to serve ever larger numbers of people. The UN estimates that there is a need right now for over 1 billion houses to replace slum houses the world over….so the need is huge.

Ghana is cool. I fell in love with the place within a few minutes of being there. Of course, I was pre-disposed to liking the place to begin with – every Ghanaian I have ever met has been friendly and fun to be around and I have loved the “Hi-Life” music for a while now. The country is hot, green, crowded and has a feeling of activity that I have not ever seen in any place that I have been to before. Where in South Africa, if you stop at a traffic light there might be one guy selling the morning newspaper, and maybe a beggar or two – in Ghana when you stop at a light, there will be 50 people selling anything that you might want or need – newspapers, CD’s, toilet paper, nuts, juice, baked rolls or bread, dried plantains, bananas, pineapple, ice cream…..and on and on. And no beggars – why beg when there are so many things to sell? The other amazing thing about these independent retailers is that they carry their wares more often than not on their heads. I have seen many times before people carrying things this way, but in Ghana they don’t even bother to use their hands to balance their loads – it is fun watching people with, say, a bread cabinet (made of wood with glass sides to show off the rolls and bread inside) on their head literally running down a line of cars and buses to get “ahead” of the competition so they can make a sale.

A typical site - the lady on the left with a huge load on her head, a baby on her back and a bag in her hand.

The other major impression from driving around Ghana is the large number of small shops and markets – it almost seems that everyone in the country is selling something to someone else. There were not very many large supermarkets or chain stores in evidence, and even the gas stations didn’t have a lot of goods in there stores. Ghana is the anti-Wal-Mart if there ever was one. Two other things I saw struck me as unusual – one is the “Grasscutter”, a small animal, or a large rat, that is considered a delicacy. They look like an overgrown Guinea Pig, or a Beaver with its tail clipped. My boss, Carl, actually ate one for lunch one day, but not only did I not try it, I couldn’t get past the smell… The other observation was driving by one of the major golf courses in Accra, and stopped at a traffic light I looked to my left at the driving range and observed two golfers taking turns hitting one ball while a third, younger man, stood down range and retrieved the ball after every hit. It was both sad observing how poor these guys were, but also it was very familiar watching golfers overcoming odds to play at their sport. In my case it is overcoming my lack of ability – in their case it was only having the one ball.

Cute, but the Grasscutter is still a giant rat, and also food....

It was a good experience visiting Ghana – I was able to meet several young, dedicated professionals who work for Habitat all over Africa and I was encouraged that I would be working with them more in the months to come. I also was thrilled to visit several villages where habitat has been building and see that the organization really has an impact in transforming lives of the poor. Sitting in my office in the big city of Pretoria doesn’t always give me the opportunity to see that, and it was nice to be reminded about what my work is really about.

Another CTA example - this man is a builder, building his own home to house three generations. He needed a loan to put the roof on - the rest he is doing himself.