Efficiency (Gina's Post)

Dad’s first day in Africa was spent roaming the streets of Livingstone like a kid in a candy store.  He was fascinated by the swarms of street vendors, the taxi drivers calling to get customers  and the endless tables of people selling scratch tickets of pre-paid cell phone time.  He made comments about the 2-foot cement gutters, uneven and sometimes non-existent sidewalks, and litter on the street, and stopped to take pictures of the numerous scenes of perceived chaos.  Funny thing is I was just commenting to my taxi driver last night how clean Livingstone is compared to other Zambian cities, and I was especially impressed with its network of sidewalks.  Guess I’ve been living here too long . . . wait till Dad gets to Solwezi.

 

“This place just isn’t efficient,” he said with the tone of someone used to the convenience of one-stop shopping centers in America.  “just look at how all those vendors are lined up side-by-side selling exactly the same thing.  How do they manage to compete with one another?  How do they ever earn any money?”  I laughed and pointed out that 4/5 of the stalls that sold only purses were vacant  and one was filled with 5 women gleefully chatting away under the thatched roof surrounded by purses for sale.  If they were intent on competing against one another for customers, it sure didn’t show.  But, they were enjoying the company of their fellow competitors.

 

I kept walking with Dad, pondering efficiency.  We stopped at an Italian touristy restaurant that advertised free wireless so he could check his work e-mails.  “Sometimes at work I get an e-mail every 15 seconds,” he stated matter-of-factly.  Glad that no one had sent him one since it was still 5 in the morning in America, I showed him how to check his Facebook messages.  I was relishing in the fact that besides Peace Corps staff, exactly 3 Zambians I have ever worked with have sent me work-related e-mails in the past year and a half.

 

“Well if efficiency is so great, I think that Americans are so efficient  in some things that it actually makes us less efficient in the long run,” I said.

 

“How so?”

 

“Well, we’ve built so many machines that now we don’t do any exercise in our daily lives, so now we even have machines to help us exercise.”

 

He couldn’t refute that one.

 

“And . . . Americans are so darn efficient that they work 50+ hour weeks and drive all over town getting to their big houses and many of the ‘modern’ diseases have at least something to do with stress.”

 

Yep . . . love efficiency

 

“And we’re so ‘efficient’ at food production that the cost for most of the foods we consume is spent using thousands of barrels of fossil fuels shipping it across the country or packaging it for efficiency’s sake. “

 

The image of the purse saleswomen chatting away on their working day and the street vendors selling vegetables produced within kilometers of the market again filled my mind.  Almost two years of living in rural Africa has led to numerous frustrations due to many perceived inefficiencies in the Zambian way of life, but has also given me a new perspective on finding balance our differing societies.