As always on these trips, it’s been a busy week. We were traveling down around Fieri in southern Albania, and spent the week interviewing farmers who had received cows or pigs from Heifer International. From what I’ve seen the process of providing a cow – or sheep or goats – to a poor family is essentially like micro credit, only with animals, not money. That cow, say, reproduces each year. According to the Heifer structure, the family then passes on one calf to another family, and can then do as they with the offspring after that. Mean time, the animal produces milk, which they can consume, or sell, or make into cheese or yoghurt to sell. Over time, it works like compound interest. If your cow gives birth each spring, you double your investment every year, which makes a huge difference for a poor rural farmer.
Being on small farms all weeks reminds you, one, how easy life is for those of us in the West, where in the US for example less than 2% of the population still lives on farms. The rest of us buy or meat already packaged, drink milk from cows we never see, and flick a switch or push a button to cook a meal. Nothing is that quick or easy on a farm.
But what really strikes you when you spend time on farms here is just how close the families are – physically, because they often share the same house, or simply build new houses on the same property as the children grow and marry – but also just close knit. I spent a lot of time photographing children this week, and it strikes you just how easily entertained they are. They play with animals, carry each other around, spend 20 minutes just trying to knock ripe fruit from the tops of trees. They don’t miss all of the distractions we heap on our kids in the US. There are no Ipods or computer games or DVDs. They don’t plunk down in front of a screen for hours on end. I really think we’re on the wrong path as far as that goes in the US.
So, packing up and off to the airport in an hour or two. Have a week to get this trip all wrapped up, then a week to pack, and I’m off to Africa for a long stretch…
June 14th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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