Jamaica is a JOKE!

[Willi]

I just saw Peruvian mangos selling for $6.50 apiece (Prima gusta = fisrt quality taste) in the big supermarket here and dem nuh better than ours.

We are just time wasters, chatting but not moving our essy kessy.

How wi fi manage medical ganja when we cant even sell wi Julies and Grahams?

Steeeuuuppps.

[Bricktop]

it is rather expensive to grow mangos for export...you need million dollar US facilities to treat them before you can export...

[Assasin]

So how Haiti and Mexico nuh have no problem? maybe we coulda take a trip and learn what they are doing that we are not, because mi see them send some fluxy mangoes all the time.

[Sir X]

Will I agree ,my biggest fear.

[Islandman]

Well Haiti at least have nuff problems with transport but them but certainly exporting some.

Willi you right but as you know nutten is ever as simple as it seems from afar.

Check out this NPR story from Haiti

...... is the story of local businessman Jean Maurice (aka Mango Man). He is a wholesaler, buying locally and then selling his mangoes to suppliers in the U.S. It turns out that there is great demand for Haitian mangoes and that he could easily sell more of them. If only he could increase his supply…. which he can do quite easily! It turns out that quite a lot of the mangoes are bruised in storage and often end up rotten or bug-infested because people were storing them in random places (e.g., under their beds) until Jean Maurice came around to buy them.

Enter the plastic crates. All he had to do was make sure that the farmers stored the mangoes in the crates. His yield would increase and the farmers would receive more income. A win-win situation for all. So Mango Man bought the plastic crates and distributed them to the farmers. For free.

But something got lost in translation. Instead of using the crates to store mangoes, people ended up using them as tables, chairs, bookcases… They were probably wondering, why would anyone waste a perfectly good crate to store mangoes when you could easily store them under the bed? Who cares if the mangoes are a bit bruised? They taste just as good– why does it matter? From their point of view, it’s hard to conceive of the North American consumer who is only willing to buy a perfect unblemished mango.

Enter the NGO

At this point, Jean Maurice decided he needed some help in implementing his scheme. He was not a fan of NGOs, but he set aside his skepticism and engaged the help of one that he trusted. This NGO had been around for a while and were funded by USAID.

Mango Man’s NGO friend tells him that he needs to create a local depot in the area to distribute crates and provide training. He would need to set up a local site. Further, the depot land must be on neutral territory, so the land would have to be donated. They find an appropriate site, but it turned out that the land is communally owned by a family of 60 people . Amazingly, they managed to get the consent of this group to use the land for the project anyway.

But now they needed proof that the land was theirs before they could begin building the depot. An official deed was needed to prove title. No one was sure what had happened to it so they would have to track it down. They finally find the deed in the basement of a Haitian ex-pat living in New York. At last, they took all of the paperwork and filed it with the government. It was touch and go for a while, but at that stage, the prognosis was good.

Then the earthquake hit. Their application was destroyed in the rubble.

And in spite of the billions of dollars of aid money coming into the country, the local NGO that was working on the Mango Crates project had their funding cut by USAID.

Aid is hard to do right

Perhaps Mango Man could have approached the whole thing more efficiently, as alluded to in this comment on the story. But this criticism misses the point: it’s hard to get the outcome you want, even when a project seems pretty straightforward.

In the case of the mango crates, each individual step in the project seemed semi-reasonable– if perhaps overly cautious and needlessly bureaucratic. A depot provided a physical space to store the crates and a place to do the training. A neutral plot of land eliminated potential ownership or favouritism issues. A deed provided security for the NGO so that the project couldn’t be closed down on a whim. Yet the end result was a bureaucratic red-tape nightmare.

Now if Jean Maurice and his local NGO friend– who are both Haitian– are having such a hard time getting some mango crates to farmers and getting them to use them appropriately, then can you imagine the challenges of say, trying to halve a country’s maternal mortality rate? Or keeping Africa’s girls in school?

[Bricktop]

I don't know...but I know that India has cut production because of the export requirements...yuh need special radiation machines to scan them with and one bag a foolishness...

[Assasin]

How about the Juice? very expensive too. One little bottle is about 5 dollars.

[Bricktop]

now that is an idea...

[Assasin]

I think Stringy mango juice would be nice.

[Willi]

At US$6.50 apiece yuh see that as a real impediment?

We full of excuses.

It tek effort to breathe and wi hungry, so is better wi stop and just dead. Much easier and we are relieved of all responsibilities thereafter...

[Willi]

So wait, "dem" waiting on forum minds to do their thinking for them?

Is suh dem think business work?

[Willi]

We are a bunch of excuse mekking idlers.

No, ifs ans or buts.

Do, or dont do. There is no try.

[Jangle]

Breadfruit is another thing. In my neck of the woods, one day I went to the Chiney man shop and tek show off a pick up one likkle breadfruit and go a the cashier. When the cashier tell me $20, me nearly drop the breadfruit like it bun me hand. Me remember how when me live a Havendale how breadfruit used to stay pon the tree and ripe because we nyam breadfruit til we clyde and now me haffi a spend US$20 fi one likkle squeeze up breadfruit.

[Karl]

At US$6.50 apiece yuh see that as a real impediment?

We full of excuses.

It tek effort to breathe and wi hungry, so is better wi stop and just dead. Much easier and we are relieved of all responsibilities thereafter...

Lacks, Willi man?
Yuh tek serious ting mek laff! ...but perhaps you are right in certain situation bettah laff dan dead!!!!

[Stonigut]

Yup, there you go.