Livelihoods

A Multiplicity of Jobs

In The Gambia I have learned much about livelihoods, the various ways in which people make their living and survive. Back home I was used to the idea of “having a job”. You can be an electrician or a surgeon or a psychotherapist or a truck driver or a shepherd. You go to work and you get paid, and this secures your livelihood. Now I realise that this is a simplistic way of understanding work. Most people here and the majority of people globally have to be flexible in their approach to making a living. It is not a simple matter of having a job, but involves a daily effort to achieve survival by any means that can be found. The majority of people are working, yes, but are not “going to work” in the sense that you or I might be familiar with.

Where I live in Latrikunda is a busy neighbourhood; the population density here is the fourth highest on the whole continent. It is impossible to escape from the noise and bustle, and I regularly find this quite wearing. Take a walk through this district and you will see people making their livelihood in a variety of ways. Most obvious are the hundreds of traders who are selling things. Some have stalls in the market (for this they must pay a small monthly tax). Others set up tables along the street, or sell from barrows piled high with goods. Some of the stallholders in the market are selling locally grown vegetables and fruit, such as aubergine, cassava, sweet potato, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and other green leaves, mint (to add flavour to green tea), oranges and grapefruit. You can find local meat, butchered there in front of you, and fish from the ocean or the river. Then there are imported vegetables such as onions or potatoes; vendors will buy a sack from a warehouse, and sell by the “saami”, a portion of perhaps five onions or three potatoes. Other foods are imported too; mayonnaise is popular, but not many can afford a whole jar (nor do they have a fridge in which to keep it), so it is spooned into small bags and sold for a dalasi or two. The same is true of tomato paste, sugar, spices and pasta.

Some women bring to market something they have prepared at home. One example is peanut paste, sold for 5 dalasi in a small plastic bag. This is the basic ingredient for tasty domoda sauce, but I use it also as a reasonable substitute for peanut butter. Or locally-produced washing detergent. Or local drinks (wanjo, baobab or ginger), again sold in a tied plastic bag and sometimes frozen. Or biscuits, or doughnuts cooked fresh at the roadside. Others are selling cooked food; you can buy fried meat chopped up with onions, either in bread, or rolled up in brown paper. You can find hot sweet tea, made with thick condensed milk. You can buy ebbeh, a sauce made with cassava and fish, one dalasi per spoonful. In the evening there are stalls with what is known as Nigerian bread, soft rectangular loaves, quite different from the local types of bread, tapalapa and senfu.

The point I am making is that each of these people is finding the best way they can to make a little money. Many of them sit at the same table day after day for long hours, often working every day without a break. There are some who have never taken a day off for twenty years. The profit margin on all these things is slim. Women sit at their stall until late at night, with a candle or under streetlight, in order to sell their last few mangos or bananas, and for just a few dalasi.

VSO operates three programmes in The Gambia. I work in the Education programme. We also have a Disability programme, working in partnership with Gambian DPOs (Disabled Peoples’ Organisations). And our third is a programme for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, aiming to provide Gambian villages, women’s groups, co-operatives and small trade organisations with appropriate skills to survive, achieve stability in a volatile and under-resourced environment, and provide secure livelihoods for their people.

Latrikunda market contains a lot more than food. There are stalls of shoes, hats, second-hand car batteries, cooking pots, beauty products, cement, tools, and plastic household goods. Some of these things are made in local workshops and other bits are imported. There are many stalls selling colourful material; Gambians like to dress well, and most will have clothes made by a tailor rather than buying a finished article. I have had a few work-shirts made by a tailor in the compound where I live.

I buy what I need from these stallholders; vegetables at the market, shampoo and toothpaste from a boy with a barrow, mayo and sardines from a nearby bitiko (small shop). There are supermarkets in the centre of town, but I like to support my local traders. Every dalasi makes a difference. I wonder if I will do the same when I return home. I would like to think that I can turn my back on Mr Tesco and Mrs Morrison (and even Herr Aldi) and buy from a greengrocer, a butcher, a baker (possibly a candlestick maker if I can find one), a local pharmacy, and a regular small grocery shop. UK lives are busy and Tesco is convenient. Yes, but like so many things in life, we have a choice. Will I dare to choose to be different, even if my choice is a bit inconvenient, or (at the point of sale) slightly more expensive? I don’t know, but I hope I will have sufficient courage, and a desire to support ordinary people carving out a livelihood rather than supporting diabolical faceless multinationals. What I do know is that I am responsible for my actions, and I am therefore accountable for the consequences of my spending decisions. I believe we should be careful about who we give our money to.

Anyhow, I may be going a little off the point. I was meaning to write about the varied way people make their livelihoods here in The Gambia.

In my street there are some metalwork workshops. Men (and boys from the age of about twelve) produce any number of articles in metal. For example they fashion gates, doors and shutters, and seats for minibus taxis. Much of this is made from reclaimed or second-hand metal. For example, sheet metal is recovered by flattening out oil drums. There is constant banging echoing through my compound (even as I am typing this, though I have somehow learned to ignore it) from the hammering of metal.

A number of men drive taxis. Private cars are rare, and therefore taxis are common. (This is a large urban area and people have just as much need to get around as in any other city in the world). Taxi drivers will generally not own the taxi, but will drive for a wealthy man who may own several. The owner demands a certain return each day, and then after fuel costs the driver keeps the rest of his takings (it will not be much). A minibus taxi will also have an apprenti who collects fares and leans out of the window yelling the destination – he also gets a cut. And then there will be someone working at the taxi terminus and helping the taxis to fill by calling out the destination; when the car is full the driver may pay him, perhaps 1 dalasi.

I am not being sexist when I refer to ‘men’ or use the word ‘he’. There is a stark gender division of labour and employment. Men drive. Men catch fish. Women grow vegetables. Women fetch water. Women cook at home. Men cook on the street. I have never seen a female apprenti. There are a few things done by either sex. Most professional positions can be occupied by either men or women; police officers, teachers and civil servants. I have both male and female colleagues in the Department of State for Education. The Permanent Secretary and his two Deputies are all men. The Secretary of State for Education is a woman. The Gambia has a male President and a female Vice-President.

I have not even begun to describe the numerous ways in which people maintain their livelihood. Some polish or mend shoes. Some dig wells. I have seen boys walking the streets to sell individual cigarettes from a box. Some loiter in the market with a barrow, waiting for something to carry. Many are labourers on building sites. Many offer themselves for daily employment in warehouses or at the docks. A fortunate few get to work in tourist hotels or restaurants, or offer themselves as guides. When a lorry unloads (almost always by hand, whether the load be sacks or boxes, planks or bricks or gravel), a crowd will gather round to help, hoping for a few dalasi in payment. There are regular jobs in government and the civil service, in local or foreign NGOs, and in fuel stations, banks, offices and supermarkets. Others try fishing, either from the riverbank or in small boats at sea. Others carry passengers across the river in a pirogue (small boat). And others work as security guards at a hotel, bank, factory or residence.

 

       

 

Differences Between Gambian Work and UK Work

But what is unusual about this? There are many different jobs in the UK too, so why am I claiming that The Gambia is different?

One reason is the lack of job security that most people have here. Very few jobs are regular salaried positions. Most people need to go out every day to sell, to farm, to make, to labour. And there is no certainty that they will find work. You might not be needed at the warehouse that day, so you go to the next place but join the back of a long queue. Or there may be several people competing to drive the same taxi. And if you do not work for a day or two (or cannot work) then you will soon run out of money. There are no social security payments, and people rarely have savings that will last longer than 24 hours. It is essential that someone in the household is working, probably every day of the year. Without this, the family will go hungry. The lack of job security is one reason why people turn to selling. They acquire goods from a wholesaler, and take a barrow out onto the streets. Some do not have a barrow and simply walk around town with a box of biros, or some t-shirts, or jewellery, or packets of milk powder; anything that can be sold. The area is flooded with people doing just this, so the amount any individual can make is likely to be small. There are too many vendors selling the same products. There are too many taxis. There are too many people cooking food at the roadside. So prices go down and profits are all but eliminated. These are market forces, of course. Capitalism has made some people rich, notably those who own the means of production. But for those at the lower end of the chain, free market dynamics (the customer’s ability to go to choose another barrow) result in longer hours of work for reduced return.

The second difference is that having a livelihood means a different thing to having a job. Many people I know in the UK have one job that provides virtually all their income. Of course this is not true of everyone, there are plenty who mix and match two or three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. (And then there are fortunate people with investments and interests that provide additional income beyond their salary). But here in The Gambia, it is very rare to see a household that is supported by one steady income. Almost every family requires a range of strategies for generating earnings. This is even true of my colleagues in the civil service; their monthly salary will not go far (between £40 and £100 per month, depending on your position), and many also do some farming or fishing, or drive a taxi. Others in the household will grow vegetables, for sale and for consumption. Children will be sent out shine shoes or to sell biscuits or bags of peanuts or water; they will not keep this money as it is needed for the family coffers. If there is a family business like a workshop, a tailor shop or a bitiko, members of the household will give their labour without expecting any payment, but simply as a contribution to household survival.

Livelihoods are precarious. When things go badly, you will be very poor. When things go well, you will be slightly less poor. I have huge admiration for my neighbours who endure endless hours of work for a pitifully small reward, and I rarely hear them complain. I also have renewed respect for people I know in the UK who run their own business, who have no salary other than that which they make for themselves by their own skills, their courage to prevail over risk, their entrepreneurship and their abilities in trade.

       

 

Work and Society

Another thing that is different here is the way in which work is bound up together with the rest of life. I think that many of us in the UK have a much greater separation of economic and non-economic activity. We go to work, and distinct from that we enjoy leisure and family time and church and clubs and things like that. Here, economic activity is interwoven into the rest of life. You might be with your family, but partaking together in some income-orientated work (although you might not directly be paid), such as shelling groundnuts or farming or preparing goods for the market. Young men gather together and repair cars. Young women go out to relax together in the evening, but take fruit with them to sell at the roadside. Work happens at any opportune moment, not at set times of day.

I believe that this is how it used to be for us in the UK too, before the advent of industrial capitalism. But we have become largely (but not completely, of course) a nation of waged labourers, employees who work for businesses that we do not own. We were slowly transformed from a nation of craftspeople with skills, to a nation of workers who mind machines. In waged work of this kind, we sell our labour as if it was a commodity, and in return we can use our earnings to buy products and services. And through the processes of globalisation, this type of waged labour is spreading throughout the world. As there is a surplus of available labour the wealthy owners of businesses are able to purchase our labour for an increasingly low price.

Industrial capitalism brought us wealth and profit, which is reinvested into expansion. There was a time when we were content with our daily bread, but we changed from an attitude of subsistence to one of accumulation. Instead of working to survive and live, we learned to aim for increasing profits. And somewhere along the line the pursuit of individual gain found a legitimate place in our vocabulary, together with the idea that a particular action or decision can be justified merely because it increases the likelihood of profit, and no matter what the human cost. We did not always put profit before people; it is a modern thing, originating in the industrial West. Let me emphasise this because it has become such an alien idea to us: in much of the world, to put profit before people would be ridiculous, and you do not have to go too far back in history (perhaps three centuries) to find the same attitude widespread in the UK too.

In the UK we have welfare legislation including a minimum wage. Our thirst for cheap products (food, clothes, electronic devices and so on) means that companies can no longer afford to be based on home soil if they wish to remain competitive. So we now see an international division of labour, with workers in sweatshops, factories, farms, call centres and assembly lines in developing countries producing products they cannot afford and will never use, paid wages that would be illegal in the UK, working for long hours in dire conditions with no sick pay, no holidays and no trade unions permitted. Next time you want to buy cheap shoes from Taiwan, cheap toys from China or cheap food from Africa, have a think about these things. Would you pay more if you could be given reassurances about the conditions in which the product was made, for the person who made it? I wish that clear and trustworthy information was more readily available for this kind of thing.

Like I say, we used to have a pre-industrial society in the UK, and it is not all that long ago. How things have changed. In the UK we hardly ever see anyone travelling by donkey cart, but here it is common. In the UK we hardly ever have to drive on a road that is not tarred, but here that is common. In the UK there are very few homes without the utilities of electricity and water connected, but here they are common. It seems remarkable, almost unbelievable, that in the twenty-first century people still live like this. But they do. Not just a few people, but most of the world. In global terms, what I see around me here is normal, not rare. It is the comforts of the UK that are non-normative. Telephones and bathrooms and central heating and fridges and kerbstones and mail boxes and books to read and home computers. When I grew up in the UK I thought that I was seeing normal life. But no, what I see out here is normal life for most of the world population. What we have in the UK, now that is unusual. I find it hard to get my head round that. If I choose to, I can go back to that life of rich indulgence. I can fly away from here whenever I want, with just a day or two of notice.  What gives me the right to go back to such comforts, which my friends here will never know? What gives our nation the right to hoard such wealth, and not share it?

       

 

Work and Poverty

I recently heard on the BBC World Service that the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe stands at 80%. A figure like this is meaningless. It does not mean that 80% of working-age adults are claiming unemployment benefit, which does not exist in Zimbabwe. It does not tell you that 80% of working-age adults are sitting around all day with nothing to do; most will be desperately seeking work (or at least some form of livelihood) for hours and hours of every day. It does not even tell you that 20% of working-age adults are usefully employed in satisfactory jobs with good conditions; this 20% may be receiving some kind of wage, but unemployment statistics do not give an accurate picture of those who are working but still receive insufficient income to survive.

Unemployment or employment figures also do not quantify the contribution made to the nation by those in unpaid work, not just homebuilding and childcare, but farming, petty commodity production and providing labour in household industries, frequently the domain of women and often invisible in official figures. The economy (of a family, region or nation) is supported not just by income-earners but also by those who subsist and exchange, keeping the cogs of society moving. For similar reasons it is hard to calculate the GNP or GDP of nations where much work takes place without money changing hands. The real issue for the 80% specified in Zimbabwe along with countless millions all over sub-Saharan Africa is not unemployment, but the reality of working extremely hard but at low levels of productivity and receiving low recompense and thus remaining in poverty.

Work is demanding. In every part of the world people give huge energies to their work, and not just the poor. But if you have a salary paid into a bank account each month you are (in global terms) rather rare. And, probably, rather fortunate.