[PEN-L:28668] Re: Re: Re: Drudgery

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman wrote:

> You are absolutely correct Joanna.  I only posted this to say that
> technology CAN improve things.  And then, this was in the WSJ.  Closer
> inspection might prove otherwise.
>
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 03:34:50PM -0700, joanna bujes wrote:
> >  At 03:21 PM 07/26/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >  >The Wall Street Journal today had a front page story about women
> >  >in Mali, whose use of mechanized grinding machines has given them
> >  >time to improve their lives and become literate.
> >
> >  What's the point of this? Did the cotton gin enable slaves to improve their
> >  lives and become literate?
> >
> >  The application of machines to work is a complex issue, let's treat it that
>  > way.

Heavens, we don't want to quote the actual article, since it includes
the observations of the women in question, rather than technological
pessimists sitting in California. Of course, this may all just be
capitalist propaganda - Thurow failed to call Shiva for a comment!

Doug

----

Wall Street Journal - July 26, 2002

Mali's Makeshift 'Cuisinarts' Create
Peanut Butter and New Possibilities

By ROGER THUROW
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

SANANKORONI, Mali -- "Thump-thump-thump" is the trademark sound of
the African bush. It is the dreary rhythm of village women pounding
grains and nuts into breakfast, lunch and dinner with their heavy
wooden pestles.

But in this village of simple mud-brick huts, the melody of daily
life goes "chug-chug-chug."

"Isn't it wonderful?" marveled Biutou Doumbia, talking above the din
of a diesel engine kicking into high gear. Balancing a baby on her
back and cradling a large sack of peanuts in her arms, she approached
a contraption that looks to have sprung from a Rube Goldberg
blueprint -- a most unlikely weapon in this country's war on poverty.

After paying the equivalent of 25 cents for machine time, she emptied
her 15 pounds of peanuts into a funnel leading to a grinder and
blender connected to another funnel, and an ooze of thick peanut
butter emerged from its spout. The job was finished in 10 minutes.
All that was left for Mrs. Doumbia was to scoop the peanut butter
into a dozen jars and sell it on the market. Then, she said with a
laugh, she might take a nap. "Before, it would take a whole day to
pound and grind the peanuts by hand, and the butter still wouldn't be
as fine as this."

Not only is the peanut butter better -- and Mrs. Doumbia's selling
easier -- so is the quality of life in the 300 Mali villages that
have the machine. Girls who were kept home to help with the domestic
work from dawn to dusk are now going to school. Mothers and
grandmothers who would have spent a lifetime pounding and grinding
now have the free time to take literacy courses and start up small
businesses, or to expand family farming plots and nurture a cash crop
such as rice.

They have dubbed the durable, uncomplaining machine "the
daughter-in-law who doesn't speak."

"It's changing our lives," said Mineta Keita, the 46-year-old
president of the Sanankoroni women's association, which manages the
machine and the flourishing business that has sprouted around it.
Before it arrived a year ago, only nine women in this village of 460
people were able to read and write. Since then, she said, more than
40 have attended literacy courses. The training to prepare the women
to manage the machine usually takes four to six months, and it gives
them the basics in reading, writing and arithmetic. Most then
continue with other courses to get better and better.

Known blandly as the "multifunctional platform" in United Nations
parlance, the contraption was invented in the mid-1990s by a Swiss
development worker in Mali who believed that easing the domestic load
of African women would unleash their entrepreneurial zeal. The
machine, simple and sturdy, was tailored for rural Africa.

A 10-horsepower motor is the centerpiece, sitting on two metal rails
about 9 or 10 feet long, anchored to the floor of a small mud-brick
shed. Rubber belts connect the motor to various tools: funnels that
channel grain and nuts into grinders, whirring blenders that husk
rice, pistons that pump water, saws that cut wood, cables that
recharge batteries. It is an industrial-sized Cuisinart.

"It's not just about milling and grinding," says Laurent Coche, a
Frenchman who has been deploying the machine in Mali for the U.N.
Development Program and is now introducing it to neighboring
countries. "The biggest impact has been to empower women."

The UNDP insists that the women who use the machine also manage it.
Once the women's association in a village can scrape together about
50% of the machine's $4,000 cost, the U.N. and other donors kick in
the rest. The Mali government, one of the poorest in the world, would
like to see one machine in every village, and it is funneling some of
its savings from international debt relief into the project.

Farma Traore, a real daughter-in-law, remembers that it used to take
"three whole days" to manually grind a 100-pound bag of corn. "It's
unthinkable that we would even do that anymore," she says. The
machine does the job in 15 minutes.

Her brother-in-law, Sekou Traore, leaned back in a chair outside his
one-room house and smiled. "Our wives aren't so tired anymore," he
said. "And their hands are smoother. We like that."

Mr. Traore and several of his brothers had just returned from the
fields where they cultivate their crops by hand. One of their wives
served up lunch: a big bowl of rice with spicy peanut sauce. Since
the women don't spend all day wielding the pestles anymore, the men
say, meals are rarely late and families are spending more time
together. "We're eating on time," said Mr. Traore. "There's fewer
arguments."

Still, the social changes take some getting used to. "Working for
women isn't an easy thing. They talk too much and are bossy," said
Lassine Traore, a 19-year-old relative who has been trained to
maintain the machine. He warily glanced behind his back and tended to
a balky fuel injector. "But I'm happy to have this job. It beats
farming."

Inside the shed housing the machine, the women's new literacy skills
were on display. Two big blackboards hanging on the walls presented a
full accounting of the operation. One board gave a daily reckoning of
when the machine was turned on and off, what tasks it performed, how
much fuel was consumed and how much money was earned. The second
board listed who worked, for how long and how much they were paid for
their labors. The workers -- usually several women and the
maintenance man -- share 30% of the day's revenues. On a particularly
active day, the machine may take in $10 to $15.

In nine months of operation, through March of this year, the
Sanankoroni machine took in about $1,600. Of that, the women's
committee paid out about $500 in salaries to the workers who rotate
on part-time shifts. The committee has also managed to build up bank
savings in a city nearby of more than $200 and cash reserves of $180
to cover operating expenses. That is big money in a land where
average annual per capita income is less than $300, and it is
nurturing even bigger ambitions. "We would like to branch out into
other businesses, like dyeing clothes and making soap," said Ms.
Keita, the committee president. "And we would like to dig a well to
get clean water."

This past spring, in the village of Mountougoula, just outside the
capital of Bamako, the women raised additional money to connect a
generator to the machine and rigged up a lighting network. For the
first time ever, the village of 1,580 had lights, with 280 bulbs
burning brightly from dusk to midnight.

"The dark is gone," said a wide-eyed Tieoule Dembele, the village
secretary. As the lights came on one recent night, he finished a
bottle of Coca-Cola at an outdoor bar and sauntered back to the
one-room city hall to continue his paperwork. A bare bulb shone above
his desk where once hung a kerosene lamp. "We do work for 16 villages
in the area," he said, "and I can't get it all done during the day."

At the maternity clinic, where 200 babies are born each year, the
midwife reports healthier births under the lights. Across the dirt
road, the proprietor of the general store said nightly sales are up
$25 since the bulb above his counter began burning.

The chug-chug-chug of the daughter-in-law who doesn't speak pierced
the stillness of the night. Soleba Doumbia, the machine's mechanic in
Mountougoula, closed the door of the shed and headed home to his own
bulb. "Every night, I'm teaching my two daughters how to read," he
said.

One day, he figures, he may be working for them.

Write to Roger Thurow at roger.thurow@xxxxxxx