Dame Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop and our roving ambassador, reports back from Nicaragua.
Nicaragua has had its fair share of natural and human-caused disasters. Behind me in this picture stretches Managua's vast city dump, La Chureca, a stark symbol of the failure of the neo-liberal economic policies pursued by the Government of Arnoldo Aleman, as decreed by the International Monetary Fund.
Here 1000 people, 700 of them children, looking like extras from 'Mad Max' swathed in scarves and goggles to protect their eyes from the toxic fumes and dust, scavenge with hooked poles through the garbage for something to 'recycle' and sell-on. Working with a local charity, Dos Generaciones, Body Shop is offering these children a better life off the dump through education and training.
Earlier I'd visited the site of the Las Casitas volcano mudslide, a natural disaster caused by Hurricane Mitch's assault on the country in 1998. A survivor recounting to me what happened on that terrible day, began with a traditional saying, 'To be Nicaraguan is to be where the problems are...', I could understand why. At 11.30 am on October 30, 1998 after a biblical '7 days and nights of rain' totalling five year's worth of normal rainfall, the crater of the volcano collapsed 'with a roaring noise like fighter planes', burying 8 communities in minutes and killing at least 2,500 people. The scar gouged through the landscape by the deluge of mud, trees and boiling hot rocks from the heart of the volcano is plainly visible three years on. Describing the sound as 'like fighter planes' comes unconsciously to a people too familiar with war.
Poised almost at the dead centre of the Americas, Nicaragua has long attracted the interfering interest of its northern superpower - as a possible conduit for the American way of life and business to the under-developed markets of Latin America or as the threat of a breeding ground for backyard communism. Run with US marine back-up throughout the early 1900s, followed by the US-friendly 40 year dictatorship of the Somoza family, in 1979 Nicaragua's people had the temerity to opt for a different political philosophy under the Sandinistas. The response from 'the land of the free' was an economic blockade, the mining of Nicaragua's seaports, and the scandalous arming of the counter-revolutionary 'Contras' by Reagan and his gung-ho sidekick, Colonel Oliver North. Following a brief period of relative prosperity after the Revolution, when non-monetary indicators of quality of life like literacy boomed, the US blockade compounded by the Sandinista's later economic mismanagement led to an inflation rate of 33,000% by the late 1980s! Nicaragua still remains the most heavily indebted country per capita in the world - only Haiti remains poorer in the western hemisphere.
But I didn't go there to rub my face in poverty and wring my hands in hopeless woe, but primarily to visit a community trade project we've been supporting since 1993. The more I've travelled the more I believe the power to change things for the better lies at the small-scale, with the people and the grassroots organisations on the ground - not the politicians, nor the IMF or the World Bank . And in Nicaragua, there are plenty of people prepared to roll up their sleeves and help themselves when state institutions such as government or the church fail them.
Despite all 'the problems', Nicaraguans are some of the friendliest and song-filled people I've met on my travels. None more so than the sesame seed farmers of Achuapa, who originally approached us through an English development worker, Nick Hoskyns, who with his belly-patting mannerisms and cool salsa moves is near as dammit native 'Nica'. Nick came to us in desperation when the international commodity market for sesame seed slumped from a price of $35 a 100 cwt to under $20. He knew The Body Shop already supported community trade projects around the world and thought there might be an ideal partnership.
From an initial 2 tonnes of oil painfully extracted by hand, the co-op now supplies over 72 tonnes, effortlessly squeezed out by a machine sourced from Nepal and fulfilling the entire sesame oil requirement for The Body Shop and in turn their 1,800 shops in 49 countries.
Thanks to the fair and stable price, the 130 strong farmers and their 200 other affiliates have built up a sustainable business that as well as offering marketing clout, runs a subsidised store, a credit union, and employs a Cuban agronomist specialising in organic methods. One positive outcome of both the US's blockade of Cuba and the collapse of Soviet Union (the island's previous source of agrochemicals), has been its developing expertise in, and exporting of, organic farming techniques.
The deal with The Body Shop isn't going to make the farmers financially rich, but it does enable them to maintain their chosen way of life and through co-operation achieve autonomy. Hurricane Mitch happened at the worst time, right at the height of harvest, flattening and washing away the entire sesame seed crop. We stood by the farmers and they knew they could depend on us to tide them over and buy the next year's crop. Through their own organising abilities they already had the structures and network to support each other through the hard-times, we merely added a fair, actively-engaged trading partnership that means they could build on their own strength and ingenuity.
Nick Hoskyns sums up well what we hope to achieve through our vision of fair trade, 'If fair trade means helping people while they remain poor and only while they are poor, then I don't think that's right. But if we mean helping people so that they can earn enough money to send their kids to school and maybe even to University then that sounds more like fair trade. I don't see anything wrong in fair trade producers wanting the same for their children as consumers of fair trade products want for their children.'
It enriches me enormously to meet with the farmers growing our raw materials. To see that something so non-essential in itself as a massage oil can sustain a rich, vibrant human community that would otherwise be broken and discarded by the world commodity market makes it all worthwhile to me.
Wherever possible I believe in seeing things for myself - why just live through others' experiences? Don't just take my word for the value of community trade, go and see for yourself! The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign are running a Nicaragua Fair Trade and Study Tour, which includes our sesame seed farmers' co-op in Achuapa.
If you're interested in seeing Nicaragua for yourself, take a look at our
Nicaragua holidays
