Simon-Jan Terpstra
Despite the precautions I’ve taken, I have wound up with Malaria. Luckily it was just the lightest form of the disease and within 2 days I was back on track. In Africa you have to be very aware the symptoms of malaria: fever, cold, headache, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and so on. If you recognize the symptoms on time and go to a doctor, the disease can be treated relatively easily. But if you wait to long, it can take a very long time to get well.
The medicines I needed cost me the equivalent of around EUR 20. For me seems relatively cheap, but you can imagine that for the locals who have an average income of EUR 40-50 per month it seems like a lot! All of this really makes me value the standard of life that we are accustomed to. That feeling continued the next day when I went for my final malaria treatment. I was on my way to the clinic at around 6.00 AM and saw the streets filled with the poorest people who were already hard at work trying to earn money for their families.
The work week here for most laborers is 6 six days. Shop owners and street vendors work 7 days a week. I knew that a lot of people have tough lives, but that morning I realized that most of the people I was seeing on the street would be working for the next 15 hours. In the Netherlands where we have a 40 hour work week people regularly complain if they have to put in one or two hours of overtime. Here people must work double what we do just to keep themselves and their families fed.
Just as for me, this country is a real education for a colleague of mine who has just arrived. Koot Nel is the South African warehouse manager for the first season. Together we are working on setting up the warehouse and packaging plant. In his first meeting he was astonished by just how much talking people do here without taking any decisions – that on top of what seems a total lack of structure for our meetings. For the next meeting we are going to prepare a presentation that outlines the way we think the packaging plant should be managed. We are focused on providing people with what they need to know for the long term because we are here to train the people, and not only to manage the plant. The people here will have to know how to do it themselves next year.
There is of course a budget for the warehouse and for the stay of the Ahold people in Mali. This many can only be released if there is a contract between Ahold and the mango warehouse taskforce. They have known for months that we were coming, they have known now for 3 weeks a contract is needed. I have pushed them to hurry up in this. They have finally sent me their first concept contract. The president of the taskforce asked me to sign it immediately, saying that otherwise I would be responsible for delaying of the project. I was quite astonished by this. I told them that I don’t like this way of working and that all contracts have to be passed on to Ahold to be reviewed.
The taskforce made up of exporters who are normally in competition with one another. But for this project they have to work together. Right now my focus is on trying to work with the president of the taskforce to get our contract worked out. I am not happy with the taskforce’s leadership, but we have no other choices. Like those people I saw in the street on my way to the clinic that morning, I just need to get up every day and start with my work and hope for the best.
For eight weeks starting in April 2007 Albert Heijn supermarket manager Simon-Jan Terpstra is working to help the management of a mango packaging factory in Bamako as part of a pilot project for Albert Heijn, which, if the results after favorable will continue in 2008.
This is the second time mangos from Mali will be exported to the Netherlands for Albert Heijn. Last year it was one container with 20,000 tons of mangoes. This year the plan is to export eight containers.
Simon-Jan started working for Ahold in 2005 as an Ahold management trainee. In his first year he was project manager in the Albert Heijn Supply Chain and the, in his second year, an assistant supermarket manager for Albert Heijn. Since November 2006 he has been a supermarket manager.
Next to his work for Albert Heijn, Simon-Jan volunteers for an organization called World Servants, which carries out building projects with hundreds of volunteers in several developing countries, helping to construct facilities such as schools, health clinics or homes with people from the local community.