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?

A Census of our ‘Bonsai Trees’: 66 Percent Increase

Has the number of young people who sell odds and ends on our streets increased? The answer is yes, yes, yes, yes! I know so, for sure! How do I know? Periodically, I count. Let’s just call it The Watchwoman Youth Hawkers Census. On Tuesday, 19th October, I hired two research assistants (Cecilia Geraldo and Darkoa Ofori-Yirenkyi) and chauffeur drove them on two road corridors of Accra to conduct a quick head count of the young people who are in motion, hawking odd products.

The results are shocking. These are the raw figures from the count. From 9am to seven minutes after 10 in the morning – a little over one hour – we counted a total of 813 people in motion, selling. Thirteen months ago on 23rd September 2009, when I first counted street youth hawkers between the same 9 and 10 am, the number stood at 489. The last time I did The Watchwoman Youth Hawkers Census was on 14th December, 2009. On that day, the number had increased to 638 from the September count. But this week, on 19th October, the quick count produced a whopping number of 813.

Percentages make interesting analysis. From September 2009 to December 2009, the increase was 30.47 percent. The figures from December 2009 to October 2010 showed an increase of 27.43 percent. The annual figure from September 2009 to October 2010 reflects a percentage increase of 66.26 percent. I acknowledge that my research assistants might have made some unintentional errors so let’s take these figures as approximations. We could approximate the annual increase at 60 percent or cut it lower to 50 percent which is still a supra-high annual increase of young people who hawk odd products on two street corridors of Accra, the capital city of 53 year-old Ghana. Chew on this.

Could it be that some or most of those who came to Accra last December to sell stuff did not return to their hometowns after Christmas, and have stayed on to add to the December 2009 number? Another Christmas is around the corner. Without a doubt, more young people would troupe down in search of ‘greener pastures’. Some or most of the new entrants might never return to what they call home but end up on the streets as petty traders.

The results of this week’s count must be troubling to every Ghanaian, especially the belly-full political elite who don’t seem to get it that our country has challenging and urgent problems that are screaming for solution. Whilst we remain captivated by NPP and NDC politics, playing referee to their petty and inconsequential details, the number of young people who sell by our roadsides are doubling. One day, we’ll wake up to find out that they’ve completely overtaken our roads.

A legitimate question: Were all these young people counted in the just-ended census? Was it even possible to have counted them all? They live in all sorts of unholy corners of our cities and big towns. Some of them take turns just to sleep. Some of them make love and babies in their corners. Without a doubt, counting all of them would be an enumerator’s nightmare.

There is also the sticky matter of the “Ground Zero” of youth street hawkers in Accra – between the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and Obetsebi Lamptey Circle. These are two of the Big Six – the Founding Fathers of Ghana. During their days, they could not have envisaged a time when the parts of Accra that bear their names would become the headquarters of youth street hawkers.

The phrase “Ground Zero” gained notoriety on September 11, 2000 when a bunch of terrorists hijacked two commercial airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Ground zero is the nonsense point; the lowest of what is so painful, so bad and so ugly. My experience of counting hawkers at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle is that it’s a nightmarish exercise. There are too many of them and in the struggle to sell, some weave their way dangerously between vehicles. My research assistants always struggle to count them with any precision.

The story of youth hawkers is a major chapter of Ghana’s story. In these days when it is flattering to talk about branding Ghana, it should also be important to emphasize the chapter of young people who are hawkers as a career choice. What would these young people become five, ten, fifteen or twenty years from now? They can’t be ‘professional hawkers’ forever! At some point, they must settle down for their real careers. What would it be? What skill sets would they transfer to the life careers in a ‘Better Ghana’ in a ‘middle income economy’? Entrepreneurs?

On Tuesday when we were conducting the count, one incident that seemed like a footnote to the exercise was the sight of a very tall gorgeous man who was also walking the street. Clearly, ‘his thing had come.’ He was talking to himself. He looked disheveled. He would be someone’s heartthrob. Someone’s darling. Someone’s husband. Someone’s father. Someone’s uncle. But now, his ‘thing has come’ and he was alone, on his own, at a loss, walking the streets. Just wait until a vehicle knocks him dead! ‘Loved ones’ will have a grand funeral – God willing.

The wares for sale:

The types of products sold by the roadside vary, depending on the time of the year or what has been shipped in from China and the likes. There was the usual PK/Chewing Gum, toffees, doughnuts, yoghurt, pawpaw slices, soft drinks, plantain chips, toothpaste and the likes.

Compared to the previous times I’ve conducted this count, during this week’s count, only a few people were selling ‘pure water.’ I don’t know what explains it. The number of people selling telephone ‘scratch cards’ appears to have increased. Oh, so the telephone companies are taking advantage of our idle youth? Without a doubt, there are plusses and minuses to this development. Job creation?

Deep Thoughts:

Bangladeshi Nobel Laureate, Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank fame, once said to the Indian Parliament: “Poor people are like bonsai trees. When anyone plants the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flower pot, he will get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed planted, only the soil-base that was given it was inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people.”

We have various categories of our own ‘bonsai trees’ in Ghana. The increasing army of children and young adults who hawk an array of odd products on the streets of Ghana are our ‘bonsai trees’. As is said in computer parlance, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Since we are not investing in young people who, by no fault of theirs, were not given birth to by the privileged, we are setting them up for failure. We will get out of them in future what we are planting in them today.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the youth who have by default, taken to street hawking. They are our ‘internally displaced persons’ who hover around looking for opportunities, any opportunities! It’s amazing that we don’t have more armed robbery than we have today. It’s also amazing that these young people continue to smile.

Baah-Wiredu Revisited

In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself among pockets of people who bring up Baah-Wiredu’s name. These people just worked with him yet, two years after his death, they still share fond memories of their boss. They are not his relatives. They are not NPP or NDC functionaries. They are just ordinary Ghanaian civil servants who worked with Baah-Wiredu. He was just their boss.

People’s memories of Baah-Wiredu are vivid. The stories are vibrant, riveting and incredible. Even if you did not know him, the stories people share about their experiences with him give you the impression that he was a unique individual. Unfortunately, it is typical to find bosses who have huge chips on their shoulders. Positions of power easily transform some ordinary mortals into monsters who whip up fear in their subordinates.

But two years after Baah-Wiredu’s death, his subordinates still refer to him as “a simple man”, “an action man”, “an ordinary man”, “a playful man”, “a humble man”, “approachable” – among many other charming descriptions. One person said, “He used to walk to our office every morning to greet us.” A lady said, “‘He called every woman ‘Maame’ because he maintained that every woman is his mother so deserves to be respected.” Another person said: “During lunch time, he would often join the drivers in their room to watch them play draft.”

When you listen to the post-death Baah-Wiredu stories from ordinary workers, it becomes obvious that the man had something unique and enchanting going in the realm of practical leadership qualities. Whatever he did – his style, his personal relationship with people, his simplicity – worked very well and embossed a positive impression on the hearts and minds of the lives his path crossed during his passage through this earth.
How many of our leaders, especially the political elite, are leaving such fond memories through their daily interactions with their staff? Is pomposity reigning supreme among some? Are workers in Ghana getting positive experiences with their bosses? Are some bosses depressing their staff to the point of making the workplace a site of terror?
Specifically, are drivers too low for a minister of state to genuinely descend to their level by visiting them in their room to have a conversation as he/she watches them play a casual game of draft? The work space of the drivers as well as that of others at the lower strata provides much opportunity for bonding and for listening to them. But of course, some politicians would be so pumped up with pride that they would easily forget their recent past of funk.
It is probably not surprising that soon after his death, the Ghana Journalists Association instituted the “Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu award for the best in Business, Finance and Economic Reporting” in its annual award cycle.
My only personal encounter with the man:

I met him only once so whenever I come across anyone who goes on and on about Baah-Wiredu, I recall my only encounter with him. It happened a few months before his death. I had been gifted ten young women between the ages of eight and twelve to mentor. After a couple of meetings with them, I asked them to choose a place for us to visit as a group where they would meet women who are doing a lot with their lives. They expressed an interest to meet female parliamentarians.

So promptly, I contacted Akua Sena Dansoa, now Minister of Youth and Sports, with a request for her to arrange for some of the women in parliament to meet my girls. The day came and we arrived at Parliament House for an all-girls’ time out in the corridors of power. As we sat in a corner in the lobby area engaged in a heart-warming conversation with three women parliamentarians, Baah-Wiredu walked toward us and asked what we were doing. To our surprise, he joined us, sitting on the edge of a couch, with his files stuck under his armpit.

Meanwhile, during the one hour or so we spent there, several parliamentarians walked by but not a single one spoke to us – they just rushed on, busy in their worlds as if we were invisible. But Baah-Wiredu sat with us throughout, the only male among fourteen females, observing us but not contributing to our conversation. He was like a flower in a vase, present, yet absent. It was an odd moment and it left an unexplained impression on my mind. Who is this man? I filed away the question.

When the news of his death broke, and over the past two years as I continue to come across people who knew him and who continue to speak on and on about how unique he was, the answer to my unanswered question -- who is this man – is being answered over and over again.

Low-cost hospitals:

The week after Baah-Wiredu’s death, I wrote in this column that I wish he had been an advocate of whatever disease he died of, and had used his powerful position and privileged voice to push for our health-care delivery system to enhance treatment for that disease. Fact: Our country needs disease advocates. We keep too many diseases as personal secrets. And.......we love deaths and funerals......too much!

Our hospitals are low-cost – ill equipped to take care of us. Ghana has the potential to become the hub for medical tourism in the West African sub-region. Yet, we don’t pay attention to our hospitals. They remain gaping death traps, waiting for us to show up just to shock us out of existence.

It is troubling that our elite go abroad when they are diagnosed with ‘sophisticated’ diseases. Periodically, news break that a ‘big name’ person has died ‘abroad’ while going for medical treatment. Our beloved Courage Quashiegah and Hawa Yakubu are just two of such sad deaths that occurred ‘abroad’. Their deaths are loud admissions that the movers and shakers of Ghana do not trust their lives to our hospitals. They know that they know that they know that our hospitals are horribly low-cost.

If they do not want to be caught dead at a polyclinic, or at a higher level – the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, then why don’t our leaders make fixing our hospitals a high national priority matter? Why is the focus misplaced on a ‘paracetamol’ National Health Insurance Scheme? What is the point in gaining political credit for promoting a once in a life-time payment for health insurance just so when we get sick, we would end up on a floor of a low-cost hospital? Is this not a misplaced priority at a sorry height?

How about using the money that would accrue from health insurance premiums, plus just a fraction of the unknown amount of money that is regularly pumped into Ghana from ‘development partners,’ to provide at least one first-class hospital in each region? Not a ‘polyclinic’ but a real hospital with qualified and well-paid medical doctors, nurses and pharmacists, plus the needed state-of-the-art equipment that works. A hospital where high premium is placed on human dignity, not the mortuary; where we can all go when a disease strikes so that no elite would need to fly off to South Africa, India, Israel, USA, Canada or London for ‘treatment.’
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com

If only walls could speak in Liberia!

War no good oh! Travel and see! Seven years after the war, pockets of houses in Monrovia still stare quietly as if they are itching to tell their stories of pain, of torture, of untold human cruelty, of abuse, and of neglect. But houses can’t speak. They simply stare, with their stories locked up firmly in the hard jaws of concrete. For several years, these houses bore witness to untold atrocities committed by human beings against human beings and of compatriots against compatriots to the point that victims became as guilty as victimizers.

I’m back in Liberia briefly. As the country’s flag depicts, Liberia is a lone star state – an obvious reference to its history of emancipation of freed black slaves from America, beginning in 1822. A lopsided liberation in which oppressed Black folks gained freedom from white oppressors and relocated to a habited land but pretended that it was empty; that they had discovered the land. And worse of all, that they, the new arrivals, were superior to the indigenous people.

The Liberian history holds eerie resemblance to the story of Christopher Columbus who claimed to have discovered America despite the presence of native Americans; with implied bogus claims of superiority of the white race.

Houses have caught my attention during this time here. As I take a close look at some buildings that are still in a sorry state of disrepair and depression, I can’t help but wonder how many of the occupants of these buildings died during the war. Could it be that their fortunes changed as a result of the war to such an extent that that they now cannot afford to renovate the buildings? What happened in these buildings – during the war?

How I hope that walls have mouths to speak! I would have asked several buildings scattered throughout Monrovia one big question: “What really went on during the wars?” Yes, several buildings seem to want to speak – to tell and retell stories of atrocities, of doom and gloom, of rapes and maiming and murders. But they can’t say a word; they just sit there, growing mouldy, with windows broken and walls pounded with bullets.

You might recall the Donald Rumsfeld Principle. Rumsfeld was the US Defence Secretary during George Bush Junior’s administration in the heat of the senseless Iraq war. In the now classic rhetorical play on words to justify the war, he said, “There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.” That statement appropriately describes the message of buildings that were victims of the war in Liberia. So I wanted to experience one of such buildings.

Inside a war-torn building:

This morning, just before I sat down to write this piece, I entered a typical war-torn building in the company of a taxi driver and a colleague because I could not dare to do so alone. Yes, I’m an ‘afraid woman’ of some sort. Yet, the curious part of me wanted to experience a moment in a war-punctured building, a building that was pestered with bullets during the war – that is, one or both of the two wars. I still feel the eerie weight of the building as I write.

The building I entered is by “Old Road”(pronounced as “Ol Row” by the locals), a major street in Monrovia. It is a part storey building. By all standards, it looked like a house that once belonged to a well-to-do family; a house that had seen real glory in times past – before the war. A house that was gorgeous – before the war. A house that commanded a presence – before the war. So clearly, the war changed everything. Now, the house is just the remnants of concrete that can tell the story – if they can at all, after the war!

During the time I spent in that building, I felt raw emotions of doom and gloom. The building had a spooky feel to it. The windows were smashed. The walls were mostly crumbled; what remains had so much greenish mould. Some doors had lost the look of having ever been doors. The roof was long gone – at least most of it. The staircase is half of its former glory. A few pieces of the wall still stood.

Numerous multi-sized bullet holes are very visible in walls. The bullet holes boldly scream fear into any onlooker. The dilapidated “Boys Quarters” nearby appeared to have some squatters. This is obvious from the sight of a few clothes hanging on a make-shift drying line.

As I walked inside and out, carefully stepping on what felt like sacred ground, a graveyard of some sort, questions rushed through my mind – fast and furious. What happened in this house? Who killed whom and by what gadget? Machete (a nice word for good old cutlass)? Stones? sticks? Sledge hammer?

For how long did the victims suffer? Was there any reason for the atrocities or it was just driven by the venom of drunken mob-like emotion? But the many salacious details are forever locked up in this house, and in many other houses throughout Liberia as well as other countries on our continent that ignored tolerance and went to war.

As I stare at the many abandoned buildings in this city, I can’t help but ponder: “What, if any, did Liberia benefit from the prolonged war?” Maybe, just maybe, Liberia has learned that war is unnecessary. But hopefully, that Ghana has also learned that it is critical to keep its status as the only country in the West African neighbourhood that has never gone on a full scale war; and that war is truly unnecessary.

But the good news is that Liberia is rebuilding. During my last trip here three months ago, some dilapidated buildings have since been fixed – painstakingly. But the truth remains that rebuilding is tougher that destruction. What is needed to destroy is a big boom! But it takes the meticulous laying of brick upon brick, plus mortar and a lot of sweaty labour to (re)build.

A Cautionary Tale for 2012 Elections:

As I look around Monrovia, I wish I had the resources to do a video documentary entitled, “The Scars of War.” With the video in hand, I would lobby GTV, TV3, Metro TV and other emerging TV stations in Ghana to show it every day from October 2012 until January 2013 – weeks before, during and after the elections. Civil Society – would you please take on this laudable project? Pictures, they say, are worth thousands of cash.

I don’t feel right about the 2012 elections because of the apparent polarization and acrimony in our political climate. Or, is it just me? Besides, the 2012 elections is about crude oil. We might as well call it what it is: “The Crude Oil Elections”. Here is why.

2015 will be the peak of the sucking of oil in commercial quantities from the Jubilee Fields. Therefore whoever wins the 2012 elections wins crude oil, big time! With greasy oil as a motivator, greed and foolishness can power the 2012 elections. And you know what greed can do! It can power even the most rational people into heights of irrationality, of desperation, of madness, and of many other indescribable things.

dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com