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| TO MARKET, TO MARKET: Unregulated traders sell goods at markets in Moputo, Mozambique. Among them is Titos Ernesto, who started
work washing and guarding cars for tips at age 9. Stephanie Hanes |
Mozambique's informal street traders strive to survive
'Car guard' Titos Ernesto represents the developing world's legions of small-time, off-the-books entrepreneurs.
from the July 1, 2008 edition
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In this city of about 1.5 million, there is a clear informal sector hierarchy. The vendors with stalls in some of the city's crowded markets are close to the top. They have to pay for their spot and are supposed to buy a government license. (They're still considered "informal" because they don't pay taxes and they don't have the same government protections as formally employed people.) Then comes the informal stalls – the people who set up rickety stands outside their houses, or along the curb near the minibus taxi stops, selling oranges, bananas, or cashews.
Sonia Alfeu, who is carrying dozens of small peanut packets in a handmade basket, as well as a baby tied to her back, is near the bottom of this pecking order. She does not have a stand or a regular customer base.
Every afternoon, after roasting about five pounds of peanuts (which cost her $3.20 wholesale) on a makeshift oven in her aluminum-walled shack, Ms. Alfeu walks 20 minutes to this cemetery parking lot market. She has sorted the nuts into little bags – she buys one big plastic sheet, then cuts it into about 150 smaller pieces – and sells the packets for a few cents each. She has been doing this for a year, she says, ever since she became pregnant and was fired from her job as a housemaid. "Sometimes the business is OK, but sometimes it's not so good," she says. Even if she sells all 150 bags, she makes about $6 - a net of less than $2 after the cost of the nuts, plastic, and oven. "I'd like to do something else, but I don't have the money."
With only a third-grade education – when her father died, she no longer had money for school fees – she says has few prospects, but that one day, she'd like to sell "in a proper place," a market.
For now, this is her main territory. She nods toward the chefe. Unlike in some places where the lower rung of informal traders gather, at least here there is some sort of order.
•••
Ernesto lives in a small cement house in one of Maputo's impoverished settlements, not far from the train tracks that shuttle official goods to and from the city's port. About a dozen relatives live with him – a collection of brothers, sisters, and cousins. Nobody in the house has formal employment, he says, but four of the boys work as car guards.
He notices a man in a dress shirt about to get into his car across the parking lot and nods toward Agostino Roberto Cumbane, one of the other guards. Mr. Cumbane jogs across the pavement, and the man pulls a few coins from his pocket before quickly ducking into the car and driving away.
Ernesto's crew usually gets a few cents for watching someone's vehicle and a dollar or more for washing it. There are no set prices, they insist.
"It's whatever people feel," says Cumbane, who has been guarding cars since he was 13. Jose Marquero, who at 22 years old is one of the older water sellers, agrees. Mr. Marquero used to be a builder, but was laid off a year ago. Now he walks five miles from his home to collect water from broken pipes around the cemetery, which he then uses to care for the plots of the ancestors of those families who were able to afford a grave in this cemetery. He hopes he can make enough money to buy bread and maybe pay the few cents for a minibus taxi ride home.
As for price, he says, "it depends on the client. Some of them don't even have the capacity to pay. But we'll help them anyway. It's community service."
Still, Ernesto says they can tell when someone is going to be a big spender or when a customer will try to leave without paying. A telltale signal is when someone avoids eye contact, or refuses to talk back. "Not everybody is honest," he says. "But we are very patient with it because that's our job."
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