Gone Fishing

Lamine is Moussa’s dad, one of the guys I work with in Ndem. Moussa once worked for his dad but has left his work for his younger brothers now since he has his own job in the office in Ndem. Lamine is an extremely hard working, smart, caring businessman. He has been selling fish to women in small villages for the last 20 years whom would otherwise have to access to it. So here is my story.

Woke up unhappily at 4:25 to mice eating something in my armoire. After I scared them off, my alarm went off just minutes later and didn’t really know if I could snooze since Lamine said he would be here “by 5, inshallah”, to pick me up. So I got ready and waited until almost 6 before he arrived (should have snoozed) and we left: Lamine, his sons, Pape Diop and Babacar and I. At this point, I thought we were headed all the way to the ocean to buy fish but since the truck isn’t reliable, they bought 4 cases of fish in Bambey at midnight. The pickup truck is small, smelly and unreliable with headlights that can only see a few meters in front of the car. Good thing Lamine knows the way well enough to downshift even before I could see the turn. The first few villages we sold to we did in the dark with a flashlight after waking up clients.

A little about the truck: it doesn’t start with a key, he hotwires it. Instead of antifreeze coolant, (like we have to worry about it freezing) they probably put over 40 liters of water in the radiator throughout the day since it goes through it so quickly. The breaks failed 2 or 3 times but good thing Babacar dropped out of school when he was 7 or 8 to become a mechanic. I couldn’t really figure out why Lamine brought along 2 sons rather than just one to help sell until we kept getting stuck in the sand… that’s why. Lamine would love to have a truck reliable enough to drive out to the ocean in the middle of the night and drive back through nearly 50 villages every day. Fish is unfairly marked up depending on the size of the catch and the middlemen who sell from refrigerated trucks in Bambey. He has rented a truck to see the possibilities and found out that fish could be sold as cheaply as 300 CFA/case. He purchased the 4 cases for 6500 CFA each in Bambey.

We drove far into the bush, as it is rightly called, on sandy paths worn down by Lamine’s truck and horse drawn carts. He knows everyone in these villages and works with women who sell the fish in their small markets. In some villages, when he started this, he had to train the women how to work. These women have such respect for him and what he is doing since he doesn’t only bring them nutrition, but he brings them income. There is no one else besides his kids and other fish sellers that he has trained that sell fish to these villagers. Weekly markets available to these villages are hard to get to several kilometers away and they can’t really stock up when they do manage to get there since they don’t have electricity for fridges and would love Lamine to sell fish to them every day.

So we passed through 16-18 villages, selling 3-40 fish to over 30 women, on credit. Sometimes they pay him from previous days and somehow he just knows who owes him however much. Most of the villages looked the same to me and I only went to like 16… he knows of over 50 with women in every one. He enters the center of a village and blows a whistle and women and kids come running with large bowls or buckets. They are rather picky about the fish he gives them so each woman is given their 40 fish plus 2 or 3 damaged ones as gifts. He passed by one grass hut in the middle of nowhere and just gave the woman 3 fish. I doubt she will pay since she is obviously a herder and hasn’t been there long, by the looks of her family’s hut. Can Lamine really afford to just give these fish away?

So we drive further and further in, selling to more and more villages. I questioned, what if you don’t sell all the fish? He looked at me, puzzled, “well you just have to go to another village”. It was probably 10:30 when we sold all the fish and we took a coffee break at a friend’s house. This is when he showed me his notebook. He writes down the name of the village and how much was collected or owed. After today’s sales, he should have made 44,800 but the only money collected so far was from paying back previous debts. So when we were done with breakfast, we passed back through different villages to pick up yesterday’s money. It was hard to see these women disappointed that he was out of fish already but when we sat down to talk with one woman he has been working with for all of the previous 20 years, she was so happy that I was going to be working with him and actually gave me a gift of 4 eggs that her hen laid that morning. Do you realize these people don’t have enough protein in their diets and she is giving me the eggs?

We passed through villages from the morning, picking up money all the way back. We also purchased 15 sacs of charcoal for 1500CFA that can be sold in Bambey for 2500CFA. He also bought feed for his chickens and goats.

So when we got back, technically Lamine should have (4x6500=26,000) +gas8000 =34000. Sales44800 - costs34000= 10,800. Ten thousand, my friend, is about $20. We left before 6 am and got home for lunch in Bambey after 4. And that is if everyone pays sometime in the next few days. He trusts his clients and has only had trouble getting his money back if he waits to revisit them over 4 or 5 days. So with that 10,800, he sets aside 7000, as depreciation for the truck. When I asked what he does with this, he said puts it into his bank account. But really, he invests it in other ways, like by buying a new sheep or more chickens. They provide more of an investment than the unreliable banks. So really, he made about 3,800CFA (about $7). Such a hard working family; hopefully I can help them out by finding either a loan big enough or funding for a new truck.