The purpose of this visit was to see the project of SDC Asia on the ground and to view all the different players of their value chain. We drove to Davao del Norte to the Patukan province—now for all of you that may have been worrying about me during this trip, this would have been the time to actually be concerned because the mountain region around this town is where the Muslim rebels live. The most recent conflict was 2 years ago between the Muslims and the other tribes that lived there…However, there’s no need for you to panic now because my day is over and I’m safely in my hotel room, fearing only the regular turndown service that it provides around 8 pm (that’s what scared the crap out of me 3 nights ago when I woke up thinking someone wanted to kidnap me).
We arrived and met with the local municipality to discuss what they were doing to assist cardava farmers and processors. Patukan’s population relies a lot on the planting of cardava, so it’s in the local governments’ best interest to finance trainings on best practices for farmers and facilitate good relationships between the growers and sellers for the cardava.
Before we left the mayor’s office they fed us a sweet cardava desert. It was mashed cardava mixed with coconut and cooked in a fire oven. It was amazing, but of course led to problems down the road for me. Our next stop was the “trader station.” He either buys cardava directly from the farmers or from guys on motorcycles that have picked up the cardava for him. He buys it, sorts it, and sells it to the cooperative (a group of people that produce banana chips) or to exporters. While we were interviewing him my bowls decided I needed a bathroom. This would now officially be my first time using a toilet in a developing country…in a rural area. I knew it was bad when I walked into the stall and saw a toilet bowl with a bucket full of water next to it containing a big dipper. That just would not do so I had to buy tissues, go back in and do my business while a little girl stared at me through the small space between the door and the wall. It’s great to think that her fist time seeing an American, she really got to see EVERYTHING and now she can report back to all of Patukan! She was only 5 or 6, but damn that was embarrassing!
I returned to the trading station only to visit another one down the street. We were followed and stared at the entire way with little school girls yelling out “beautiful.” While we were interviewing the trader, small crowds of people would pass by to look at us at the stand.
We had lunch under palm trees at the beach! It was very picturesque and I did not want to leave. We ate belly of tuna, roasted pig (and I got to see the entire pig), rice cooked in banana leaves, a flower salad made from the flower of a banana tree, coconut juice—from the coconut, and other goodies. Then the major sent us 4 girls to perform a Muslim dance of some sort (this is what they called it, not me). It was very pretty and looked closer to an Indian style of dancing than Middle Eastern…but what do I know.
Regretfully, we left the wonderful beach and headed to the cooperative, which they call the “first-fry”. Factoid for you: when you make banana chips you have to fry them twice. I will describe the rest of that later. We were able to see the entire process of the first fry which basically involves a bunch of people pealing cardava with sharpened spoons, washing them, cutting them into little slices, cooking in coconut oil, cooling, and sorting. This place processes 2-3 tons of chips a day. Those chips are then delivered to an exporter that finishes the rest of the process and ships them to the US, Europe, and China. This was a very neat experience, but the only thing that really bothered me was that there were some young children there, that probably should have been at school. I’m sure this is an issue with the poorer families in the town…school or money for food.
Finally, we met up with the big exporter. He fed us first, this time with ripe fruit and two variations of cardava that had been fried into wonderful little deserts (I don’t think I have ever eaten so much banana in such a short span of time).
He took us through on a tour of his plant where he does both first fry, second fry and packaging of the banana chips for exportation. We noticed there was also a lot of child labor going on here. He also keeps the workers in this very enclosed area; it’s hot and dark, and I can only image what kinds of accidents happen in there when people are in front of large boilers cooking at 150 degrees centigrade. The tour was quite short and then we had a final questions and answers session. I was too tired to pay a lot of attention, but tried by best to look interested. Mostly he complained about the exchange rates, cost of coconut oil, oil, and the farmer’s prices on cardava. He was entertaining at least.
That’s it for today.
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