Halfway up Mount Elgon, a bumpy hour’s drive from the busy centre of Mbale in eastern Uganda, the women meeting at the Konokoy Organic Coffee store are unabashedly cheerful. Cheerful, despite the persistent, late rains that threaten this year’s coffee harvest. They have recently discovered that they can make money beyond coffee, though that crop remains the main source of earnings in their households.
We have come to talk with a group of women who grow coffee for Konokoy, one of the 16 primary societies that belong to the Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative. For the past two years, 10 of those societies have taken part in the WIEGO-led Leadership & Business Skills training project, offering training that reached over 1,200 women.
In a shaded alcove near where coffee is being dried and sorted, we meet Justine Watalunga, the project coordinator for Konokoy. She has an expressive face set off by her bright yellow dress in a traditional style and print.
She explains that Konokoy formed 12 women’s groups, each with 20 members. As one group gathers, Justine tells us the women have enjoyed the project trainings, and the social aspects of coming together. “But what they learned most, and loved most, is savings.”
Justine explains the revolving merry-go-round style of saving that the women established. Each group of 20 decides on what to they will save for in a particular month—it could be household goods like cups and plates, or something to improve their businesses. They all contribute 1,000 shillings each week. In the first week, the full sum is divided between five women; the following week, another five women receive the money. This repeats in the next two weeks, and by the end of the month every woman has received a lump sum of 4,000 shillings and bought the items.
But their saving strategies go beyond the simple, enforced merry-go-round system. They have all been encouraged to make budgets and save on their own. One of the older women in attendance, Esther, praises the habit. “I no longer have financial gaps. The needs at home are met, and we do not depend just on the men.”
From watching each other, the women have learned that they can use their savings to invest in businesses that improve their livelihoods. Justine points to Stella, a young woman sitting in the group, and tells us that Stella got the idea to sell petrol to motorcycle drivers. She began with one jerry can, saved the proceeds from sales, and now has five jerry cans—and money in her pocket that she can call her own.
“She is admired. When women look at Stella, they see how she has grown up. Then they look around for where there is a need and they have their idea, just like Stella did,” Justine says, adding that the training has helped them understand how to spot a particular niche. “They are thinking far and looking far now.”
Justine says the women’s small businesses have made a big difference. “Life comes better. Before, we were waiting for men to give us everything because we didn’t have any money in our pocket.” That creates greater harmony at home, too—many of the women shared that their husbands are pleased that instead of “demanding” money or things, their wives now contribute income to the household.
There’s plenty of irony in that statement, given that these women do most of the work involved in growing and harvesting the coffee. However the land, and therefore the coffee grown on it, almost always belongs to the husband. On Mount Elgon, gender inequality has very deep roots.
According to Tabitha Namarome, Gumutindo’s Gender Coordinator, “A lot of these women prune, pick, wash, dry and carry the coffee to market—and the man will follow and sell it and take the
money.”
But she believes a progressive change is happening—slowly. In the past few years, she says, she knows of about 30 husbands who have given a plot of land to women in the training program—because the men, too, have learned about the issues—and 34 who have agreed to make the land a joint holding with their wives. Bureaucratic red tape, however, makes the official transfer of title difficult. Tabitha says it can take years. While Gumutindo requests that women keep at it until they have the documents, the cooperative does recognize the transfer of land title as soon as the process is begun.
Justine herself farms 300 coffee trees. One of her six children, a son, works with her. Her husband, however, works far away and is only home occasionally and for short times. “I am the one controlling everything at home,” she laughs.
She was trained as a master trainer more than two years ago, and has since passed on her knowledge to four other leaders who now train the women in this primary society. “Before, I had
nothing to teach them. But then I learned to help them plan and I learned even more about saving than what I used to do, and now I feel powerful.”
Her newfound confidence led her to put her name forward to become chairperson of her primary society last year. She was defeated, largely she says because so few women are members and the men opposed her. Now, she’s encouraging all the women who can to pay the membership fee to Konokoy before the 2017 elections. Because in 2017, Justine plans to win.
“We shall have a woman as the chair. Men say this is our store, but we will change that.”