The Economy at Work

Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. 

Look, the tears of the oppressed—with no one to comfort them! 

On the side of their oppressors there was power

with no one to comfort them.  ~ Qoheleth 4.1 ~

Last Saturday I had the luxury of passing through Duala as a passenger instead of the driver. Usually I am at the wheel with 12-15 passengers on the way to an appointment in Monrovia, or by myself making a grocery run.

As a driver I see a lot in Duala. As a passenger I saw even more.

Duala is about half-way between Ricks Institute and Monrovia. That puts it near the heart of Bushrod Island, which has a high population of struggling Liberians and small population of economically stable—even comfortable—international business people.

Unemployment in Liberia is about 85%. What jobs are available usually are passed out in accord with a patronage system that has endured since the 1940s. If you get a job and get some influence you make sure that your family and friends are next in line for a job, no matter how small.

That leaves a growing population of poor and uneducated people crowded together in squalid housing, if you can call an abandoned shipping container, or four walls of woven palm-frond with a plastic tarp roof, housing.

Duala bustles every day  the under the sun. It is a picture of the economy at work.

Here is how it works: International business people, most from the Middle East, own the traditional business like supermarkets and hardware/building materials stores that dot both sides of the road that cuts through Bushrod Island. Duala is the place the indigent and eager gather day-after-day. The lucky ones find something like a job as a porter or as a vendor.

There are wheelbarrows everywhere—thus, the porters. The contents of those barrows range from fresh produce to grains to bread, to various meets, to palm oil, to clothing. The porters carry disposable goods to the vendors who sit under the sun, or, perhaps, under a large umbrella advertising  beer or a cell phone company.

Where do these disposable good come from? One hundred feet, or so, back from the road there are modest warehouses, some nothing more than abandoned shipping containers (there are a lot of them in Liberia), stacked full of 50 kg bags of rice (from China), or tires, or plastics, or recycled clothing, or knock-off sports shoes, and the like.

The international merchants buy in bulk and break down, for example, a 50 kg bag of rice into zipper bags of a few ounces, or a wheelbarrow full of rice will be delivered to a vendor who, in turn, measures out rice in a rusty can, according to her customer’s desire. And, yes, “her” is right.

Duala is the place one can buy one tablespoon of mayonnaise.

Here is the economy at work: The international merchants own the merchandise and the wheelbarrows. Porters and vendors are consignment workers. They pay up front for what they carry and/or hope to sell. With each transaction the price goes up, of course. Everyone needs to turn a profit, no matter how small (except for the international merchants who always  get their money up front). And, yes, the international merchants collect rent on the wheelbarrow.

There have been efforts to supply porters with a personal wheelbarrow, but the efforts have failed. Unless a porter pays the rental fee, no merchandise is available to move around Duala to the vendors.

So, what I see in Duala are the tears of the oppressed. The tears are not always literal, but the pained expressions, the blank expressions, and the occasional angry outburst between porters and vendors, all are tears, literal or symbolic.

And what of the merchants—the international merchants? They endure the scorn of Liberians who lack economic power. “Lebanese” is a four-letter word in the mouth of many Liberians. They have (economic) power, but there is no one to comfort them.

Liberia is the only country in the world that refuses citizenship to all except those who can document a shred of African ancestry. I understand that, given Liberia’s beginnings as a colony—and then a republic—for freed slaves.

My point is not about Liberia citizenship. (Perhaps I’ll address that later.) My point is that the power of the oppressors excludes them from comfort in the same way that the oppressed are not comforted.

Both the oppressed and the oppressor yearn for liberation. That, for ill, is how the economy works.