A Native Daughter Goes Home — Part V
I’ve been dubbed “a hustler” on more than one occasion by friends, colleagues and associates who marvel at my high energy levels and tenacity at juggling more than one job, business or venture at one time.
On this inaugural trip, I realized that being a “hustler” is in my blood. In Sierra Leone, jobs are few and far between, yet everyone manages to scrape by succeeding on some hustle or another — whether they are peddling wares on the streets, self-employing themselves as an airport porter, running a cab business on the weekends out of their bosses’ car — people are quite creative on with ways to get by. Towards the end of our trip, we headed down to the Victoria Park market to purchase cultured souvenirs for family and colleagues back home.
Park is a two- to three- mile strip of a dirt path-lined market featuring several dozen open stick and bamboo booths with mud cloth roofs. We were not foolish enough to go alone. We were armed with Nanatu’s cousin Mabinty and her brother, Foday, who both live in Sierra Leone. They’d do our bargaining and drive the original quoted price down to a reasonable and respectable amount. There, in Park, you’d find wax cloth, fabric, embroidered sheets, sewn clothes, European jeans, beads, wall art, jewelry, sandals and various leather and other handicrafts.
I was careful not to open my mouth and reveal my American accent. Certainly, any peddler within earshot who’d hear me speak would jack up their quoted price 5oo%. I’d have to walk straight and peer out the corner of my eye and be sure not to give eye contact to anyone shouting, “Sister, sister, come look!”
I made this mistake once to a particular sunglasses peddler who ended up following us throughout our entire 40 minutes shopping trip. I rejected his initial offer to pay the equivalent of $20 for a pair of obviously counterfeit Christian Dior’s sunglasses, but he knew I liked the look of the glasses and persisted to shadow us and show me other options. After scoffing at his price, I refused to listen to his protest about how the glasses were shipped from Europe.
Finally, as we were heading home and was all buckled up in our car gearing up to take off, our driver Daniel offered him the equivalent of .75 cents for the glasses through his driver’s side window. Not UnsSurprisingly, the vendor accepted! That told me something about the benefit of having an escort through the markets, but it also said something about the “hustle” mentality.
I did feel guilty that we were so resilient about getting fair offers for our goods because certainly the day’s sales would feed their children, grandparents and many in their respective households. However, I did not feel that guilty that I would not take my Christian Dior knockoffs and later proudly wear them through Brussels airport, leaving a couple of European airline passengers doing double takes.
From my brief visit, it appeared to me that answer the solution to the Sierra Leone’s almost mandatory hustler mentality may lay in the implementation of macroeconomic and structural reforms, starting with standardization of the market, economic principles and trade.
Sierra Leone’s economy is dependent on its fishery, agriculture and mineral resource base. It is a country particularly rich in precious gems. The trade in illicit gems, known as “blood diamonds” for their role in funding conflicts, perpetuated the civil war. Today, diamond exports, in particular, are helping to buoy the postwar economy, although much illegal cross-border diamond trafficking continues. The manufacturing industry consists mainly of the processing of raw materials and of light manufacturing for the domestic market. The answer seems to be more investment especially given the high rate of country borrowing.
High rates of unemployment, coupled with fragile infrastructure and economy makes the outlook bleak, but not reparable.
To be continued…
