The Hindu Business Line : She took on the copra mafia

Isobelle Gidley has taken on Vanuatu's copra mafia, organised 60,000 people into a co-operative initiative, and is working to improve the lives of the country's indigenous population.

When asked an innocuous question if the organisation she heads as CEO gets its funding through membership fees from its 60,000 members, she shakes her head and says: "No, through me... myself."

It's difficult to find so much energy, dynamism and grit packed into a single human being, as it is in Isobelle Gidley, who hails from the tiny country of Vanuatu, a part of the Malenesian group of islands in the western pacific with a population of two lakh, 92 per cent of it indigenous. "It's a black island; my mother is black and I'm white," says the woman whose father is a Briton.

She has played a phenomenal role in taking on the copra mafia — 80 per cent of the population is Vanuatu is rural and agro-based with the major activity being making copra from coconut — and breaking its monopoly in copra export.

In Chennai recently to participate in a workshop conducted by the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat (CS) to create sustainable and gainful employment, for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Isobelle's story begins with her "very wise mother who used local folklore and traditional medicine to treat people in a place without any basic healthcare. She used with great success plain old sea-water... we lived near the sea and if you had a problem, first of all she would bathe you in the sea! She used sunshine, salt water and finally herbs, and got almost 100 per cent success."

Naturally the mother was loved and respected in the community and that "opened the door for me when I went home after being away for a few years in Australia."

She had to return to Vanuatu after her mother developed Alzheimer's disease following an accident. "For 25 to 30 years she's been an invalid; she could neither talk, walk or communicate and so we took her to Australia for medical treatment but unfortunately nothing much could be done."

A writer and theatre person, Isobelle had to give up theatre because she had to go back and forth between Australia and Vanuatu to take care of her mother, and grandmother, who is still in Vanuatu.

She found it easy to return to Vanuatu "because it is so close to my heart", but is sad to see "that nothing much has changed. In 1980, post independence, everyone had hopes of a grand future; everybody thought that as colonisation had ended, we would magically be transformed into a State where education and healthcare would be available to all; everybody would be prosperous even at the village level."

Vanuatu has a strange structure when it comes to paying for something like education. The people are certainly not wealthy and yet have to fork out "thousands of dollars for their children's education," says Isobelle.

When you express surprise at this, she says with a smile, "We were colonised by the French and the British. So even after independence, the cost structures are in accordance to European standards; nothing has changed. The government insists on education being compulsory; so if the people can't make copra and get it to the markets; they can't get money to educate their children."

This is what makes copra export so crucial. When Isobelle started working with the Vanuati people, she found that there was a monopoly set up by the Vanuatu Commodities Marketing Board, "which should have been a public service organisation, but was very corrupt and mafia like; it took us about two to three years to break the mafia-like structure."

The struggle got a shot in the arm in 1996 when Vanuati got "a very progressive prime minister in Serge Vohor. Even though he lost his job for it, he helped us by giving an export authority and licence to ship out copra. We managed to ship out to Bangladesh 7,400 tons of copra that came directly from the farmers with no middlemen! The Board said this was impossible because only 5,000 tons of copra could be collected that year... That set the cat among the pigeons and started the battle," she says, her eyes twinkling.

The prime minister lost his seat within a few months of giving them the export authority and the government started changing every 7-12 months. "But now the marketing board has been disbanded, the copra industry has been opened up and anybody can export."

There was no looking back after this; even though "it is still a battle, people feel they can do it." And now they have a champion in the gutsy woman who is undeterred by death threats from the copra mafia and continues to fight on their behalf. One of her major battles pertains to a huge property of coconut farms which is leased to foreigners by the government but which the indigenous community wishes to have to improve their farming prospects. According to Isobelle, even though she recently managed to get the required amount from New Zealand's Maori Trust to buy the property, the government sold the property to an Australian group "because it has to be seen to be supporting foreign investment. Very sad things are happening; the indigenous people are not allowed to even cross the land, they are being shot at and the rivers are being poisoned."

But what about the justice system?

"Of course we've gone to court, but the justice system doesn't always work in Vanuatu where the system is not about the truth but about who plays the game. It's a power game and it's how you entrap the other side into failing."

Meanwhile on the copra front, in 2001 she set up the Vanuatu Indigenous Development Alliance (VIDA) and by 2002 it had become a commercial entity with 60,000 members," says the woman, who is its CEO. She explains how whatever the community produces is marketed through VIDA.

"There is cent per cent transparency and all of us work on a very equal basis; nobody gets more money than the other. Members grow copra, cocoa, vanilla, and traditional vegetables and fruits like banana, taro, yam, and we're trying to add value at source." Her constant endeavour is to find new export markets and wipe out middlemen. "Food items like rice, which need to be imported, are got directly from the farmers and reached to the consumers. We've wiped out the middlemen and this has halved the prices for a staple like rice which used to cost $30-40 for 25 kg."

Isobelle explains that people like rice because it can feed a big family; "on top of that they can have a root crop, cabbage and coconut milk... so that becomes meat... cabbage with coconut milk provides the protein." Meat is very expensive in Vanuatu, with a kg of beef costing $4-5.

When you wonder at an island not having a flourishing fishing industry, she says, "We don't have a fishing industry at all because the government has sold off the licence to foreigners; they fish and take the catch to process it for export markets. We're trying to address this with help from the CS and EU funding, and are near a breakthrough".

So what about VIDA's own funding... the question asked at the beginning of this article? Isobelle's response is a laugh. "I've put in my own money little by little... everything from my writing goes into it. My husband is very stressed out and every now and then he says: `Isobelle, I can't stand this; you've simply drained out our bank account."

She adds that her husband, a journalist working with the London Daily Mail, based in Australia, "is a very nice man. But unfortunately for him, he's married to an islander." The couple has one daughter who is an artist in Australia.

So how does it feel to take on a country's copra mafia, organise 60,000 people into a co-operative initiative, and work for improving the lives of an entire indigenous people?

"I don't feel I've done anything at all; I think they have done it and that gives me the strength to continue... because I'm really on the periphery, they are the core," she says, and goes on to reveal another startling fact. "The only thing I've done is to influence them to take in the thieves, vagabonds... people who're normally outside society. I've had to push and cajole them to take such people into VIDA and we've had the most amazing turnaround."

In what traditional managers might term a bizarre form of management, she has "put thieves in charge of money, and with extraordinary results. I've told them this is something that is not negotiable; they have to keep records, and nothing should be missing. It's a remarkable success which only proves that we all need champions."

But Isobelle is not resting on her laurels. She is now encouraging the Vanuati women to work with natural dyes. "That is why it was so exciting for me to come to this meet; I'm working with some Indian women who can send us plain non-dyed material from India and our women can use natural dyes to make stuff for tourists and even the local market. I'm also looking at importing jute bags from India to pack and export our copra."

She is also sold on the "wonderful technology you have for village education; our literacy levels are very poor and I'd like to use the Indian model on adult education," she says, adding, "This has been the most astonishing, enriching and rewarding experience for me because I can take many of your concepts and grow them there... And I no longer feel alone."

Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

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