Gracie's Gone...Ah!: Cashew Convention!

So as I’ve mentioned, the main reason for my trip last month was the 6th ACA Annual Conference. This is the central event of the ACA year and I’d been working on it heavily basically since I started here. We had 360 attendees, which was way more than the 250 we were anticipating (we had an office pool on how many people we thought would come and the winner was the person with the highest guess – 305). Of course, this created tons of logistical headaches for us, but all in all a good problem to have. And we can now say that this was one of the largest gatherings of cashew players ever – and honestly, the fact that his happened in this tiny country in Africa most people have never heard of is really pretty cool. We figured out we had the people responsible for processing 80% of the world’s cashew there, and it was awesome to see some of these major cashew industry giants sitting right next to the smallholder African farmers who grow the cashews that ultimately end up in their plants. And as one of the head guys at Planters pointed out to me, all these major industry players are not here because they want to do something “nice” for Africa – they’re there because they need Africa. And that is what ultimately makes an organization like ACA sustainable over the long term and why its so interesting to work for – it accomplishes development objectives like raising incomes and creating jobs while also being in the self-interest of the global industry so they are willing to fund its activities.

I wish I could write more about my own experiences at the conference but honestly it’s all kind of a blur. I was getting back to my room at about 1 am and waking up at 6am and spending the whole time in between dealing with OHNOTHEWORLDISENDING type problems (or at least that was how everyone acted). It reminded me a lot of the feeling during the week of the show during plays from high school. From our perspective the conference was honestly one disaster after another. I won’t dwell on them here, but just as an example a cat got in the generator causing all sorts of electricity problems (my boss really enjoyed referencing our cat-astrophe. He likes puns.). We were also constantly behind schedule and registration was a nightmare. So we were all amazed when we got the conference evaluation forms back and they overwhelmingly praised the great organization of the conference. So I guess it just goes to show what’s happening behind the scenes is often not nearly as terrible as you think.

Speaking of the evaluation forms, an interesting cultural difference was readily apparent. Nearly all of our delegates from the US and Europe commented on late starts, sessions running over, all of the timing problems we had. However, almost none of the African delegates made any note of this. Really illustrates the point everyone makes about how time and being punctual is viewed so different here. Similarly, once we got behind schedule our European and American speakers would open their presentations with something to the effect of “I know we’re running late so I’ll keep this short” and then hurried through their presentation. Not the Africans though. They still talked for way over their allotted time. Just different I suppose.

Despite all the headaches, I was so glad I got to experience the conference first hand. Unlike other conferences, you could see real substantive things happening: people forming business partnerships, buying new processing equipment at the exhibition, learning new grafting techniques to improve tree yields. These things will have a direct effect on our mission, and really makes all the work seem worth it. It was also great to meet so many of the major players so I can now put a face and personality to the email address. In other news, I was also forcefed scotch by the Indian delegation (“Just sip it!” was my boss’ whispered advice as she dragged me over at their request) led by my old friend Raj, and let’s just say if I ever decide my dream job is to work for a cashew company in India, I think I’m covered.

I’m sure there are other things to comment on but honestly I’m kind of out of words about the conference I’ve mostly just written about it non-stop since I’ve been back. I’ll write more about my impressions of The Gambia and Banjul itself in the next post.