Peak 'Stuff'

Peak stuff  

Ikea has warned that in Europe we tend no longer to want to have more possessions, preferring to spend any spare cash on services and experiences. Services tend to be labour intensive and expensive in Europe, and with the oncoming demographic change in our society, this is likely to get worse.

We haven’t quite got to the same situation in Zambia. Here, ‘Stuff’ is highly prized and endlessly repaired, and imported goods that would be cheap by almost any standard are replaced by hand made craft produce that require many hours of patient labour. The population is growing and there are lots of young fit people who have no regular work.

Floor Mats are made from palm leaves that are divided into strips. Some of them are died black and then they are very skillfully folded into neat patterns. It takes a skilled man a day to make a mat, which he sells for about $2 US.  So his monthly income is $60 US! Bricks are made by finding the right sort of clay which is locally abundant, and pouring it into a mould and then firing the result in a brick oven using charcoal as a fuel.. Market gardeners cycle into market in the morning with huge home made baskets of vegetables on the back of the bike. There is lots of football played in the afternoons as it begins to cool down but the kid’s balls are home made from all sorts of stuff held together with sticky tape.

There are of course a few things that cannot easily be made by craftsmen. Shoes are important status symbols: none for the poor, flipflops for most, and the top layer of society ie teachers, nurses, safari guides etc have proper shoes, which are always smart.  Bicycles are used to transport goods and people. Commonly one sees huge bundles of firewood or a whole family on one bike. Dad rides with one child on the cross bar and wife and baby on the luggage carrier (yes South Luangwa is very flat!). Every 2 km or so along the roads is a cycle repair workshop, and they are always busy fixing the very cheap bikes ($70 US) that are imported from China. Mobile phones are an essential tool. They are all ‘pay as you go’  with vouchers costing as little as 10 cents. They do of course break regularly, and there is another whole industry with little booths selling airtime and spare parts and lots of young guys fixing them with primitive tools such as screwdrivers made from bicycle spokes. Plastic bowls for washing up and washing clothes, and metal saucepans for cooking are other essential imports.

The zietgiest that says that people’s time is cheap and that stuff is valuable has some unfortunate effects in the local health clinic, which has a tiny budget of $80 a month to spend on buying tools and equipment. This means that relatively well paid nurses (and volunteer doctors) spend time wandering around from room to room trying to locate rare items like a pair of scissors, or a weighing scales, or a thermometer, or a BP machine.

So we have something in abundance that they value and lack i.e. stuff, and they have something in abundance that we value and lack ie human labour. This is of course a classic economic example where trade could be of huge benefit to both parties. And to some extent this is what the hugely labour intensive safari holiday industry does, exchanging this labour for hard cash which Zambians use to buy more Stuff that they do really really need.  

The classic  trade would of course be agricultural produce from Africa to supply overcrowded Europe, but it is hampered by the tradition of small scale farming, ignorance, long supply lines, and tariffs and other restrictions.

We need some way of using African labour to meet our needs, and pay for it so that they can meet theirs.  Ideas are welcome!