People Migration

I'm going to state something obvious. Ready? People in Mali are poor. Not all, but most. If you didn't know that already, please, by all means continue to live in a bubble of isolation and ignorance.

Now for something less obvious... What does it mean to be poor in Mali and be able to support oneself?

I had a conversation with my dad last night about the economy and job market back home. He pointed out that things in the US are still not good and lots of people still can't find work or are in danger of loosing their jobs. In addition, promises made by politicians to improve the state of economic affairs still haven't been realized by the masses. Officially the unemployment rate in Wisconsin is at about 10% and Michigan is about 15% right now. The overall rate is about 9.5%. In reality those numbers are probably much higher, but have been "massaged" based on how the statistics are reported/interpreted. However, he also pointed out that despite this, the US still is much better off than a place like Mali. With that said, I thought I would provide a little explanation of the job situation in Mali.

Officially, the unemployment rate in Mali is 30%, although to me this number is about as arbitrary as saying that the global temperature will rise by 2.1 degrees over the next 10 years because there has been a 4.6% increase in the number of Big Macs consumed in the last 36 months. It's basically meaningless. Why? Because something like 80% of the population busies itself with subsistence agriculture or nomadic herding for much of the year and then struggles to find something else to do when not engaged in their primary occupation.

If you are a man born in a village, you are most likely destined to be a farmer. You start herding animals about 10 minutes after you learn to walk and then start working "full time" in the fields after 5th or 6th grade. From June to September you cultivate and plant fields. Then from November to March you harvest your crops and sell what you can at market. From April to June there isn't much to do, so you either make repairs to your house or try to find other work.

Since you're a farmer living out in the sticks there's not a lot of jobs to be found in village and not a lot of money to be paid if you could find something. Therefore, you pack a bag, wave goodbye to family and friends, and head to Bamako or a regional capital to find work for a few months. As you are essentially uneducated, you have no valuable work skills. Also, everybody else has had the same idea, so there's more workers than there are jobs. This means that you are limited to very simple jobs that don't pay well because employers don't have any trouble filling employment vacancies. If you do find a job, it will probably be something like unskilled construction labor, pushing a hand cart for local deliveries, selling bottles of water or juice on the street, or loading and unloading trucks. And it will only pay about $2 a day if you're lucky.

You'll probably be living with a relative or family friend or may possibly pay to board at someone's house. You live as meagerly as possible so that you save all the money you can for when you return to your village for the next planting season. If things are really bad, you may even move to Ivory Coast and try to find similar work in one of the port cities and the send money back home. This migration of people makes it very difficult to establish official population and employment statistics because people are constantly moving back and forth between city and village.

Also, there are no government services to act as a safety net. No social security. No health insurance. No unemployment benefits from the government or employers. No retirement funds. No occupational safety regulations. You're on your own. If you can't find work, well that's just too bad. And if you get injured and can't work... I guess you should have been more careful when using a grinding wheel without any safety glasses...