Made on Earth (12 page)

21 November 2007

A crane lifts 40 to 50 containers onto the dockside at Dakar harbour. Everything is more chaotic here than the container harbours of Hamburg and Singapore. Here, the cranes grab containers and put them wherever there is a free space, with very little forward planning.

It’s often said that globalisation exploits developing countries – particularly those in Africa. Many people are still under the impression that Africans have the majority of what they produce taken away from them, just like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At this time Africa was the world’s greatest exporter of raw materials, spices and exotic goods, and the large industrialised nations of the West fought to colonise it. These days, the opposite is true: dozens of full containers are unloaded from the ships that arrive there
and very few full ones are returned. Sometimes, even empty containers are loaded back onto the ships, because there’s no container storage space left at the harbour.

Is this exploitation? This depends on which products are being transported. It’s not only old clothes from Europe that are flooding into Africa. On the dockside are also hundreds of old cars which have been shipped from Europe to Africa. Other containers are loaded with food, for example, onions from Holland, beef from Germany and so on. All of these products come from rich countries and have been on very long journeys. Nevertheless, they are sold in Senegal for way below their cost price. The Senegalese buy these products because they are cheap, which means the local farmers who produce food in Senegal barely earn anything. All of this food, which has been shipped in these containers
has been heavily subsidised by the European Union. This means that the EU pays its farmers for every onion and pint of milk, which makes  it possible for the food to be sold so cheaply in Africa.

The receiver of the old clothing container waits at the entrance to the harbour: Moustapha received the paperwork for the shipment by fax from Hamburg and has come immediately to pick it up. He’s brought all the paperwork with him, but the harbour manager informs him that unfortunately his container doesn’t seem to be there.

Disappointed, Moustapha heads back to the pick-up truck and tells the driver to wait while he heads back to his office to call Hamburg. In Hamburg they tell him that the container
has
to be there.

22 November 2007

First thing the next morning, Moustapha goes looking for the container. He studies the markings on the side of each metal box trying to find the one that belongs to him. Eventually, after half an hour in the unbearable heat, he finds it. He goes back to the harbour offices, and sure enough, his container’s details still aren’t on the harbour’s received freight list.

After much pleading, one of the harbour managers agrees to go to the spot where the container is.

“Well I’ll be damned! It’s like magic! It really is here!” the manager exclaims.

However, the manager’s original feelings of relief quickly change to confusion. The container shouldn’t be here as it’s not on their list. He decideds to speak to his colleagues about the situation. After 30 minutes the manager returns and tells Moustapha, “This is a big problem. We need to speak with the Ministry of Trade.” Moustapha can’t take any more. He takes one of the customs officers to a quiet corner. They speak quickly – hands are raised over and over and they both sigh many times in frustration. Eventually, as in Bangladesh, a small envelope changes hands . . .

When they finally return, everything’s been sorted out. The problem with the list is suddenly no longer important and tomorrow the container will magically appear on the list. Two hours later a crane will then load the container onto the truck that’s been waiting since yesterday.

They can finally get going – but now the pick-up truck won’t start. Moustapha looks at the driver, who shrugs his shoulders. “It was working yesterday,” he mutters. A stranger leans into the cab. “Do you want me to go get some petrol? I have a bike and I’m as fast as the wind!”

The driver waves him away. He picks up a hammer, climbs out of the truck and opens the bonnet. The truck is immediately surrounded by men. As long as you’re not in the Sahara, you’re never alone in Africa. The men give out advice and make jokes while they wait for the moment they can help someone load or unload a truck. That way they can earn a few CFA francs (CFA is the abbreviation for Senegal’s currency: franc de la Communauté Financière Africaine) – though they’d prefer euros. The driver hits the engine here and there with the hammer, fiddles with the piston rings and curses loudly.

“Shall I go and get some petrol?” one of the men asks.

“Get lost!” snaps the driver.

After half an hour he finds the problem: the petrol tank is empty. The driver had left the car running with the air conditioning on because it was so hot. Three men fight over the petrol can. One of them is victorious and gets his friend – the one with the bike – to take them to the next petrol station. A quarter of an hour later they’re back with the petrol.

Finally, the driver and Moustapha can leave. They drive through the capital at a snail’s pace: vans, buses, trucks, cyclists, mopeds
and
a crowd of people are clogging up the road. This means that we have plenty of time to take a look around.

Dakar has around two million inhabitants – making it about the same size as Hamburg (or twice the size of Birmingham in the UK). The city appears to have been cobbled together without much forward planning. High-rise blocks tower over mud huts, while stylish hotels, bars and shops stand next to shacks made out of plywood and corrugated iron. Thousands of colourful handkerchiefs flutter between buildings: the Senegalese may be quite poor, but life here is loud, fun and colourful. They love music; you can hear it everywhere on the streets, from Caribbean dancehall to salsa. Above all however, there is an African mix of funk and pop, known as ‘mbalax’, which was made famous by Senegalese musicians Youssou N’Dour and Omar Pene. Like all Africans, the Senegalese also love vivid colours, especially the women who wear colourful clothing or traditional robes called boubous which are covered in vivid patterns. The men cover their cars, fishing boats, signs above their shops and whatever else is important to them with colourful patterns too. There are a lot of horns sounding on the roads today – everybody wants everyone else to get out of the way because they think they’re in the biggest rush!

Moustapha’s place is on a side street just off Avenue G. Pompidou. It’s only 1.5 kilometres away from the harbour, but it’s taken over half an hour to get here. The truck parks in front of a huge doorway. The driver hasn’t opened the doors of the container yet as there’s a group of men hanging around in the hope that they’ll be asked to unload the truck. Moustapha doesn’t have any employees.

In Africa, especially in the cities, there are always a couple of men in the area ‘by chance’ who are willing to either unload or load something. Moustapha haggles with the men over how much he’s willing to pay them to unload the truck. They agree on 2,500 CFA francs, which is around €40 euros. After they’ve carried the second bundle of clothing into the building on their shoulders, the men are sweating so much that their faces begin to shine. They are closely supervised by an associate of Moustafa, who keeps track of how many bundles of clothing they have carried on a piece of paper. This piece of paper won’t be kept for Moustapha’s records, it’s just a way of making it clear to the workers that they are being watched, so nothing goes missing during the unloading process.

The bundles of clothing won’t be in Moustapha’s possession for long. News of the arrival of new merchandise has spread like wildfire, and curious locals have flocked to check it out. But the problem with the bundles of clothing is that there are ‘good’ bundles, and there are ‘bad’ bundles. In good bundles you can find 10 or 20 good pairs of stonewashed jeans with frayed legs. But in bad bundles, there is only clothing made from linen –
trousers made of thick cloth and shirts in boring colours. People only want to buy the good bundles – but the challenge is to work out which are good and which are bad. No one is allowed to open up any of the bundles – otherwise everyone would look through them and only take the good stuff. From the outside, it’s very hard to tell which of the bundles are good. Africans are very fashion conscious, just like Europeans. The young Senegalese find out what is popular in more developed countries through adverts in newspapers, films or online. No one wants to buy light blue jeans from the second hand shop – they’d rather have no jeans at all!

Cotton, Boubous and Why Africa is

Losing its Colour

When we think of Africa we think of the Serengeti with its elephants, lions and wildebeest, and above all a boisterous mixture of people wearing colourful clothes. Two out of every three items of clothing in Africa are the product of clothes recycling. Thousands of tonnes of old clothes are brought from Europe every year to West Africa. East Africa gets most of its recycled clothing from North America. These imported clothes actually cause many problems for the people who live in Africa. The clothing is sold even more cheaply than the clothing produced locally in West Africa. A lot of people would have worked hard to produce these traditional clothes: from growing the cotton and spinning the thread, to sewing the items. In Ghana it’s completely different: here, people only buy clothes that have been made in the country. In Mali the boubou is a status symbol. It’s a long, celebratory robe with fine embroidery – and it’s produced in West Africa.

Among the people looking at the clothing bundles is Aisha, a 38-year-old mother of five who owns a market stall in northern St. Louis. Aisha got up at 4.00am this morning to get to Dakar to buy clothes for her stall. She’s looking for bundles, which through the packaging, seem to have more blue and bright red as hopefully these bundles will contain jeans and colourful dresses, which have been selling well lately. Aisha has to pay 80,000 CFA francs for her bundles, which is around €120 euros.

A boy accompanies Aisha – fifteen year old Mohammed. He won’t leave her side for the whole day and takes care of all the heavy lifting. Mohammed carries the bundles to the bus station, the Gare Routieres de Pompiers, near the Grand Mosque, to where the ‘taxi-brousse’ are parked (the ‘bus-taxis’). These minibuses only have 12 actual seats, but the drivers make extra, makeshift seats out of wood, folding benches or simple metal rods. That way, with a bit of pushing and squeezing about 30 people can fit inside. The minibus won’t leave until it’s full, and it takes two hours to squash enough passengers into the bus to fill it. No one can turn or lift their arms, and Aisha and Mohammed sit in silence, sweating.
Why isn’t the bus moving?
A man appears at the driver’s window and gives him a package. There is much talking and gesturing, which they hope is the signal to leave! The driver starts the minibus’s engine, zooms on to the main road without looking right or left, and heads north.

Everyone enjoys the air that streams in through the open windows, but they only get to enjoy it for a moment as the heavy traffic makes them keep stopping. As soon as the traffic allows, the driver hits the accelerator. It seems that he wants to make up for all the time he spent waiting at the bus station. The passengers are shaken our of their seats, and those sitting close to the windows start to fear for their lives.

Mohammed whispers a prayer for protection. Aisha on the other hand is familiar with this journey. She sits sideways so she can always see the back of the bus. The worst thing for her would be if one of her bundles fell off the back.

23 November 2007

Created by French colonists, the port town of St. Louis is the Venice of West Africa. The centre of the city is situated on a long island between the river Senegal and the sea, joined to the mainland by a 500 metre long bridge. The bridge’s curved arches, made by French engineer Gustave Eiffel, were made from the same steel he used to build his famous tower in Paris. The old city centre consists of tightly packed, stone colonial houses, which are becoming more and more run down. Aisha lives here with her family.

After a bumpy 10 hour journey with one bus change, Aisha, Mohammed and the bundles make it home in the early hours of the morning.
Aisha will open up the bundles and lay out her new wares on her market stall by the beach. She does some calculations in her head. The bundles cost €120 euros each. Her family need around €120 euros to survive for two weeks, so she needs to make at least €240 euros. She usually meets her target, but not always. Sometimes, smaller traders like Aisha buy a dud bundle. A couple of weeks ago, she got a bundle that only made €100 euros, so it didn’t even cover the cost price. In Africa, it’s not possible to get refunds for bad products. People are used to getting by on strokes of good or bad luck and instead of moaning about it, they try to find other ways to make ends meet.

3 December 2007

There are lots of wooden fishing boats on the beach at St. Louis. Most of them are elaborately painted and have whimsical names like
Gift of God
or
Merciful Heart
. Tourists are always stopping to photograph them. The beach looks especially beautiful when the fishermen return with their catch. The beaches overflow with people when this happens because everyone wants some delicious fresh fish. However this scenic picture is deceptive; the fishermen only used to have to go to sea for one or two days. They would then be forced to return as their ships were so loaded down with fish. Nowadays, even after a whole week at sea the catch is
still
poor. Huge commercial trawlers are to blame for this – they take the fish from right under the fishermen’s noses.