Of Bricks and Budgets

A few weeks ago President Obama released his proposed budget to Congress - which to econ and public policy nerds, is a pretty exciting moment, often more so than the State of the Union.  Sure, in the State of the Union the President explains about his dreams for the year, but its in the budget where he really  puts his money where his mouth is.  While talking about things does make a difference - inspiring others to act, massaging through conflicts and disagreements - a lot of decisions are made based on where the money is, and in the end, if there isn't money for public housing, there isn't going to be enough public housing. 

The reason I bring this up is because learning about budgets in Rwanda, and thinking about my own budget here, has really brought to light a key difference that makes Rwanda that much harder to navigate for me.  Budgets are different here, with significantly different priorities.

Case in point:  For the past few weeks I've been working with some of the other staff here on getting a big donation of bricks from Kigali to Agahozo-Shalom so we can start using them to build a science center.  As part of this effort, we need to hire workers to load the bricks, and initially, I was involved in the negotiations over their pay.  On the one hand, it seemed silly to negotiate with the workers, when the difference in pay would be only a few dollars, but on the other hand, I knew that any money we overspent was money that couldn't go to the kids at Agahozo-Shalom.  I felt pretty weird as I tried to explain the concept of a non-profit budget to them (all in French and Kinyarwanda, by the way), something that was even harder when my skin color just kept shouting "Amafaranga" (money) at them.  In the end,  I even helped them load about 100 of the bricks (they loaded 12,000 that day) explaining that I wanted to contribute to the science center, to try to get across the point that this was for kids, not some super rich foreigner.  I kind felt like the Republicans I used to lobby in Congress who always was telling me that there wasn't enough money, and so when I could no longer load bricks, I drew diagrams on my notebook to re-convince myself that I was a Keynesian.

After a couple of days using the Kigali workers, we decided to bring our daily workers from the surrounding village, whose lower living costs means a more affordable day rate.  We'd take them to Kigali to work, with a bit of a bonus to cover lunch and dinner in Kigali.

On the first day they were down there, around the time they were supposed to be picked up and brought back to their homes in Rubona, I got a call saying that instead, they were going to spend the night at the brick yard.  I was horrified.  Why?  Can't we find them somewhere else to sleep?  Who dropped the ball? I didn't understand why the plan had changed such that they wouldn't be going back to their families that night.  I frantically called all those involved trying to figure out what to do.  Finally, I understood what had happened.  They WANTED to spend the night in Kigali.  Many of them had never been to Kigali before (which is an hour away, and which I travel to almost weekly), and wanted to spend more time there.  In fact, they decided to stay the next few days, and some even chose to spend the weekend there, with their wives sending blankets back on the brick truck.  I thought these workers were stranded in a brick yard, and they saw themselves getting a chance to explore the big city and make extra money.  Different priorities, different budgets.