The immensity of smallness

---

This morning as I got ready for work the local news ran a story about the growing and profitable business of wheelbarrows in the major markets around the country. They profiled a man who rented out his wheelbarrows for five cedis a day, and the people who rented them from him, who in turn earn back the rental fee and more (hopefully) carting bulk items around the market for people. The main focus of the piece was that this was a service that was rapidly immersing itself into the fish-pond like economy of those crowded once-a-week markets.

I couldn't think of a better snapshot to describe the absolute immensity of small "businesses" that drive so much of this economy. In the US someone would buy the wheelbarrow themselves, or more likely pull up to the shop in a car, and load up the goods, then drive off, having paid a large sum via credit card to a salaried worker of a major chain. But here a woman goes to the market on the one day a week, buys a few kilos of cassavas, paying a little to the farmer at his stand in the market, then gives a little to the wheelbarrow man (who has already paid the wheelbarrow owner the day's rental fee) to transport them to the tro-tro, whose driver she gives a few coins to take her and the cassavas back to her village, where she may sell them to her neighbors, putting her money back into her pocket a few cents at a time. Or maybe she cooks the cassavas into something else, added a little more price and value for herself when she sells them.

Sometimes when I'm walking around with my economist hat on (it's very fashionable and great for warm weather, by the way), just watching all the business that is happening in such small amounts around me is overwhelming, for good and bad reasons. The good is you feel alive, inspired, and like you are a worker bee in a hive, enjoying the buzz of your neighbors. The bad is you keep wondering to yourself "where is this getting them?" Everyone running around for a few cents, working long days at tiny tasks and just having enough to cover the calories burned that day and maybe a treat for their kid. This is especially relevant now as I look at the business activities and income of the microfinance clients we've interviewed and talked with. So many of them seem to do the exact same thing--small-scale trading--and it begins to feel not just maybe inefficient, but also like giving them little loans to keep doing this is not going to lift anyone out of poverty the way a new industry or more high-skill labor would. But then there are also the people who do use this capital to grow, who then in turn create more employment for their neighbors, and maybe really make a difference in well-beings. And around here, I think even when it seems like it doesn't, you have to remember it does often start with one wheelbarrow full of cassavas.

---

Comments

[mom]

website below has enjoyable description of Mole National Park, which RKM's other fans may enjoy reading. mbk http://www.travelafricamag.com/content/view/373/46/