The Kerosene Seller’s Profits

Trading fascinates me. Since the days of ‘control prices’ in the PNDC era when Ghanaians spotted the “Rawlings Chain” (a reference to extreme weight loss that was characterised by protruding collar bones – caused by nation-wide famine and other funky under-developmental matters), a time when traders were whipped in public for hoarding and/or selling above government fixed prices, I’ve tried to glean into trading at any opportunity. I once ventured – to manufacture and sell corn dough to boldly confront my own Rawlings Chains.

Shortage of LPG has caused me to fight the temptation of going so close to nature by reverting to firewood or charcoal for cooking. Currently, I’ve settled for kerosene. Initially, I could just take a gallon to a ‘petrol station’ to buy kerosene. No more! For two months, petrol station attendants tell me, “Madam, these days we don’t get kerosene oh.” What am I to do?

But the nagging question is – how come no one is talking about the shortage of kerosene in Ghana? Oh, I know why! It’s because kerosene is the ‘oil’ of the poor. Without kerosene, those who have not been connected to the electricity ‘grid’ are left gyrating in the dark. With the shortage of kerosene, ‘control price’ has gone to the dogs, the full venom of capitalism has taken over as retailers boldly stare at kerosene with austere tactics.

Profit margins:

The last time I bought a gallon-full of kerosene at a petrol station, I paid four Ghana cedis and fifty pesewas. But in these austere days, I buy kerosene from my neighbourhood neck-of-the-woods umpteenth-level retail kiosk.

Here is a report of my first experience. With privilege and naiveté smeared all over my aging black little face, I told Auntie Akosua (not her real name) that I would buy a gallon of kerosene. She responded crisply, “It is not sold in gallons.” I saw a litre-sized plastic bottle and requested for that quantity. Again, she told me that it was not sold in litters but in a small sized Coca Cola bottle. A blessed Coca Cola bottle promptly appeared.

The fascinating and painstaking four-step process of retailing began as kerosene was poured first from the retailer’s gallon into the litre bottle and then into the Coca Cola bottle before the almighty kerosene found its way into my own gallon.

In all, it took thirteen rounds of the Coca Cola bottle to fill up my gallon. At 80 pesewas a bottle, a gallon-full of kerosene at my neighbourhood retail sells at GhC10.40, a whopping profit of GhC5.90. Auntie Akosua had nothing to do with kerosene manufacturing yet, she can make more than a 100 percent profit at a go. Not bad for petty trading!

In the entire chain of manufacturing, distribution and retailing of kerosene, neighbourhood retailers on the end of the chain make the most profit. In the “Rawlings Chain” era, this woman would have been a frigid eye-popping candidate for public flogging on a hard bench.

But, na who cause am? She didn’t create the shortages. If privileged little me, in a car, can’t find kerosene to buy, who is anyone to judge this retailer for her profit after she has gone through the trauma of rain and biting tropical sunshine and endless queuing to buy kerosene? The law of supply and demand wins, always!

As I watched the kerosene seller at her retailing best, it made perfect sense to me why it appears that every second or third person in Ghana is a trader of some sort; why kiosks and unsightly tables have taken over our roadsides. Indeed, the profit of retailing explains our kiosk/container culture.

While pondering over the issue of profit, I caught myself thinking of a career change or a career addition – to retail something, anything. Watch out!

This story is not just about kerosene and the profit retailers make. It’s a profile of what the shortage of gas is doing. The frustrations we are going through just to make fire to cook is unacceptable. Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention, so people who had adopted LPG as a result of a national campaign to promote its use are reverting to whatever alternative comes to them easily even if the method is closer to the Stone Age.

My guess is that the price of charcoal and firewood has also gone up. But worse of all, my fear is that more trees are being felled; more forest cover is being lost. Is anyone responsible for making the logical connection between the shortage of LPG and loss of forest cover in our country? Is anyone watching out for our forests? Who and where are the elders of this town?

Or, are we waiting for the time when as a country, we would be producing our own gas from our emerging crude oil status to ensure that LPG shortages would be a thing of the past, that is – if we don’t end up torching/flaring the gas at sea, like our neighbour Nigeria does with reckless abandon?

‘The gods must be crazy’

Oh, the Coca Cola bottle! The inventor of that bottle could never have known the unintended consequences and uses of his/her invention. It has been used for things holy and unholy depending on one’s circumstances and ingenuity.

That bottle is hard and shapely therefore easy to grab and hold. It has reuse capacity beyond measure because it is tough to crack. You can drop and pick it up without a grain of worry. Oh, the indefatigable Coca Cola bottle! It’s therefore not surprising that it features in the story of kerosene retail in Ghana.

Watching kerosene retail reminded me of a movie classic I’ve watched several times since it came out in the 1980s. Set in South Africa and Botswana, it’s an adventure comedy entitled, “The gods must be crazy.” If you’ve not watched it, find the three-part pirated version that are still available on street-side retail by our hardworking youth who are toiling their lives away as petty traders in the merciless tropical heat.

“The gods must be crazy” features the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. It’s one of those timeless movies that can make you laugh with tears streaming down your face while you suffer rib-cage cracking pains. But you must first get over all feelings of racial pride that might make you feel insulted as a Blackman and an African and get in the way of pure entertainment.

The storyline in brief. A Coca Cola bottle was thrown down from a helicopter over the Kalahari Desert. A Bushman finds it and takes it home. The family did not know what it was but in no time, they individually and collectively found critical uses for the strange bottle – for grinding and for pounding and for any number of varied household chores. Soon, the bottle was in such hot demand that it became the source of family feuds in a place where conflicts were unknown before.

As the Coca Cola bottle enters the fray in kerosene retail, one can only ask a simple and innocent question: Are the gods crazy in our own neck of the woods?