Slow Milk, Fast Miraa

Observing information travel in Nchigi, Kenya

Communication for behavior change is a lot like driving. You shift gears based on the road ahead. If the road is tarmacked and smooth, you might floor it. If the road is potholed and muddy, you might move a lot slower. 

I began wondering how cars and communication relate after I returned from an immersion in Kenya in May 2013, courtesy of Twaweza. While spending 3 days in Nchigi (part of Meru Central District) with a farmer and his extended family, I asked myself many questions. My favorite question went something like this: Why do some kinds of information travel faster or slower than others?

Two trades that involve a lot of information movement and that intrigued me were those of milk and miraa, or the khat plant. I noticed that while milk travels much slower than miraa on a daily basis, each trade has its constituents who value information that comes with the product. And they value this information regardless of how fast the product travels. In fact, constituents value the information to the point that their livelihoods depend on it. If the product stalls, their lives stall. The faster the product moves, the faster their lives move.

Milk and daily updates

The man who hosted me in his family – my host father – has several plots of land. With his wife, brother, son and grandchildren, he raises cattle and grows potatoes and avocados. But everyone also has other enterprising skills: The brother owns a village retail store, the son co-started a print shop in the village square, one of the grandchildren is an aspiring electrical engineer, the wife makes delicious sukuma wiki. And my host father has a milk route.

My host father's milk route comprises of three sets of tools. One cart, two donkeys, and three large milk containers. Every morning, around 7am, he sets off with the cart being pulled by the two donkeys. The cart carries the three milk containers which start off empty. Between 7 and 8.30am, my host father makes three stops in the village, which are about 20-30 minutes of slow walking apart. At each stop, there are a group of people waiting for him, each person with smaller container of milk. Unlike my host father's containers, theirs are full. They fill up his containers while he jots down their contributions and chats with them while he does so.

After the three stops, my host father takes the collected milk to the village dairy cooperative. The cooperative then makes finished products like packet milk, cheese, yogurt and even ice cream if you commission them to do so. The proceeds come back to my host father and the other milk farmers in the village.

This process happens every day. What was intriguing for me in addition to the cooperative itself is the chatter that happened when my host father made his stops. Everybody there asks questions and reports on what’s happened in the last 24 hours: Whose cows are doing well, what the village chief is planning for the next month, who had a baby, where the children went and who this new guy from Dar-es-Salaam is. Topics were not necessarily restricted to the dairy trade. While this information might seem trivial to urban dwellers, this is the kind of conversation that reminded me of news updates and Twitter feeds. Without this milk route, my host father and those he collected milk from would not be able to exchange that information any other way.

Trends in the Kenyan milk trade indicate that such milk routes are indeed important to people’s livelihoods. A report by the Tegmeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development observed the number of milking cattle to be up to 5.5 million; around 1 cow for every 7 Kenyans. For the sake of comparison, there is 1 cow for every 5 people in Uganda; 1 cow for every 3 people in Tanzania. The Kenyan dairy industry contributes about 3% to the national GDP, indicating strong reliance on dairy farmers. Since the area I was hosted at in Nchigi was mostly farmland, milk is likely to have sustained a proportionally larger population there, compared to the national scale. 

Furthermore, a Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development report notes that the dairy industry provides a significant employment base for Kenyans. This refers to both production and services in the dairy industry. It was evident that my host father’s milk route provided partial employment to many others; the day I walked with him on his route, there were at least 10 individuals who contributed to the cooperative.

Given the Kenyan dairy industry’s contribution to national income and the employment opportunities it offers, there are gaps in efficacy. The same Ministry report calls for a “supportive policy environment” (p 69) and “full representation of all stakeholders” (p 72), which broadly translates to listening to dairy farmers. For example, I came across one milk vendor who claims that farmers have inadequate access to animal feed in times of drought, which reduces milk production.

It could very well be that milk could move a lot faster if more farmers were included in dairy farming policies. But from my observations, those who do milk cattle know each other and exchange a lot of information at least once a day. Taking the situation as it is, information that travels with milk is likely to also be served at least once a day.

Miraa and hourly updates

And then there are products that move much faster. On our way into and out of Nchigi, we were on the road for several hours. I couldn't help but notice many khaki-colored single-cabin pick up trucks that had the biggest mounds of produce on the back I had ever seen. These mounds fetched at least twice the height of the cars themselves. And these cars were zooming past us with their headlights on (even in broad daylight). It didn't take long for me to learn from the conversations around me that these were trucks transporting miraa, or mirungi, nicknames for the khat plant.

Miraa is a legal trade in Kenya, one that involves frequent deadlines and high speeds. You either chew miraa or know someone that does. No authorities will stop cars moving miraa. It has become such a big trade in Kenya that cartels are known to be shipping to other territories. My rough estimates put the miraa trade at 0.5% of the Kenyan GDP, employing up to 9 million people[1][1]. And this is one of the reasons why these trucks were speeding on the roads – to try to get to the airport on time. The other reason is that they are supplying local retailers. Apparently, around 2pm every day, the miraa street vendors are given their allocations and they spread out in Nairobi and other cities. If the shipments from the plantations are not in by that time, the transporters and their suppliers don't get paid and have to wait until the next shipment.

It's a competitive business. Each transporter's team is for itself. So they can't actually afford to stop, otherwise they lose cash. For them, key information is about selling points, departure times, going prices and laws. Without this information, their work becomes meaningless and risky. With it, everyone involved in the trade has a specific role and a place to be at all times.

Apart from its supply chain, miraa encourages group chewing, or what one lecturer called khat parties. During these sessions, groups talk for hours, similar to get-togethers for tea, or beer, or cocktails. This kind of conversation is different from my father’s milk route conversations: While one transpires over a few hours and involves an intoxicant, the other transpires over 3-10 minutes and will not happen for another 24 hours. 

But miraa’s supply chain and social culture are not for everyone. Recently, the British home secretary banned the khat plant. It joins an existing list of countries, including Tanzania, Canada and the United States, that prohibit the plant and classify it as a controlled substance. With reason too: Some consider it a narcotic drug that becomes increasingly addictive when used.

Regardless of how laws will shape up around the miraa trade, it stands in sharp contrast to the milk trade when it comes to how fast information travels.

Valuing information via speeds

Information has always traveled. It is useless if it sits in one place. What is different today compared to the past is frequency and reach: We are able to exchange more information today, and across more boundaries than any other time in history. As a result, people's livelihoods increasingly depend on access to this traveling information.

But returning to my question – why does some information travel faster or slower than others? – I find that the answer depends on what information is moving. In the case of my host father and his milk routes, the conversations held at milk spots were filling gaps of information created over 24 hours, like a newspaper. In the case of miraa traders, conversations concern fast moving deals from hour to hour, like a stock ticker. And both scenes have their own audiences.

It might be that some people on my host father’s milk route actually chewed miraa and were on the miraa traders' schedule as well. Likewise, it might be that some of the miraa traders I spotted on the road were in fact part of families who harvested milk. In this case, these particular people are part of both information movements. But it is likely that most audiences are oriented in different ways.

What does this mean for communication for behavior change? It could means two things. First, behavior comes from people, and people are part of different crowds. Depending on which crowd one wants to send information to or receive feedback from, there could be many ways in which to tap into their behavior just from an information source perspective. Second, while the notion “behavior change” comes from fundamental gaps in observable behavior itself, it is worth considering that everyone has something they need to do. My host father needed to be on the milk route because that was his responsibility to his village. The miraa traders need to be moving in fast cars because that is where their bread and butter comes from. Why this is, is another story. But it is. And that is where any communication for behavior change must start, not by telling it like it should be or might be, but by telling it like it is. 

---

---

[1][1] The BBC estimates that up to 30 tonnes of miraa is cultivated every day. I also heard from Kenyan friends that a kilo of miraa on the street goes for about $17. That comes to $510,000 per day in gross income, or just over $186 million per year (0.5% of Kenya’s GDP in 2011, $33.6 billion). BBC also estimates that miraa farmers make $20 a day; assuming this per diem as the daily average for all those involved with the miraa trade, that amounts to just over 9 million people.  

By Al-Amin Kheraj, Program Officer, Twaweza