Advances Part II: Keeping it on the DL

   Over the last three days we distributed just about all the money we are going to be giving as advances for coffee this year. As I wrote last week, we put most of our resources into farmers who are part of our organic growing program. We figured that the best way to get this done was to convene meetings in each of the villages/quarters we are working in. Ostensibly, the agenda of the meetings was to plan for the training sessions we will have in the next several months (which in itself is an important activity that I’m happy we accomplished), but we also used the opportunity to pull some people aside and make these transactions. This kept us from either having to travel all over Oku tracking people down or advertising broadly that we were going to be handing out cash this week.

   One of our goals was to keep this activity as quiet as possible. About 90% of farmers are interested in getting an advance on their coffee at this time of year, so if it became common knowledge that we were in the process of giving out cash we would never hear the end of the demands. As you may imagine, pulling individuals aside in a crowded meeting itself provides some complications but Cassman, Philip and myself pulled it off pretty well. We didn’t make any actual plan, but we were able to get by with one or two people providing some kind of distraction before or after the meeting while the other(s) got to work somewhere a little more private. Of 23 individuals in Oku we delivered an advance to 19 along with two people who stumbled upon our ‘plot’ who we decided we were safe giving a small amount to. That leaves four that I’ll need to track down over the next week or so in order to finish up.

   There was one individual who actually turned down an advance on his coffee. I didn’t speak to him about it, but Philip tells me that he has bad feelings towards holding any kind of debt, fearing that if some misfortune were to befall him he would leave his wife or children in an uncomfortable position. Apparently he also manages his money well enough to be able to pay for school fees from his own pocket, something I really admire. This guy represents an exception to the rule.

   The more common situation is for someone to tell you about how they are suffering and that an advance would help to solve their problem. On a very personal note, this irks the heck out of me. I understand and respect the position of any business person who tries to get themselves the best deal they can, and most people view an advance payment as a pretty good deal (and from the way we handle ours, I’d say they are right), but I occasionally need to take a deep breath to keep from snapping something along the lines of, ‘How is that our problem?!?!’ In fairness to me, I never really get that close to snapping, but I am really often reminded of a story a former boss of mine (Steve) told me: A man goes into his boss’ office, sits down, and tells the boss that he needs to give him a raise. The boss asks why he needs to and the man tells him that he just found out his wife is pregnant. The boss glares at the man and yells, ‘Are you accusing me of sleeping with your wife?!?!’ I think I’ll try that story out with a friend of two and see how it goes over.