“It sounds like a great business model,” I say.
“That’s what most people think!” says the boss. “Apart from the fee we pay to the charity we get the clothes for practically nothing – so it can be a pretty good business. But these days, at least half of the clothes are only good for export – so the business doesn’t make its money back.”
“How come? I ask.
“There’s a lot of competition and the costs are high. The containers have to be emptied regularly – and the sorting process is labour intensive. A machine can’t do it . . .”
I’m so deep in conversation with him that I stop paying attention to the sorting process going on around me. This is why I miss the moment when a worker on my left pulls my red fleece out of her pile. While she inspects it a bit more closely, she listens in to our conversation.
“ . . . it’s too expensive for most clothing recyclers to continue working in Europe,” the boss goes on.
“So what do they do?”
“Well, they stick all the unsorted clothes in containers and ship them to Dubai. There, immigrant workers from India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Africa do the work for about $300 US dollars a month,” he tells me.
“And that’s how companies save money?”
“In Dubai they don’t have to pay even a fifth of the wage that is required by law in Europe,” he explains.
The worker on my left is so intent on listening in on what we’re talking about that she overlooks the stain on my fleece. Seconds later, it finds itself in a container bound for Africa. I head home two hours later. My fleece is in a huge compactor along with 50 other pieces of clothing. The clothes are squashed together into a big ball, wrapped in plastic and kept compressed with industrial rubber bands. The small but heavy bundles are transported by wheelbarrow to the waiting container in the yard. It takes another two days of sorting and compacting until the container for Africa is filled.
9 November 2007
Early in the morning, a truck backs up into the company’s yard. The container is loaded onto the truck by forklift, and away it goes. If the fleece had a window seat, it would say, “Hey, I know this road!” The truck is heading north on the motorway to the container port in Hamburg.
8
The Fishing Industry and People Trafficking: A Journey to West Africa
13 November 2007
Wilfried Hermann, the crane driver, feels a jerk as he lifts up the recycled clothing container. The container has been sitting in Hamburg port for four days now which is much longer than most of the other containers, which have already come and gone. In the meantime many large container freighters have docked in the quay, but these are all headed towards Asia or America. Ships heading in the direction of West Africa only come by once or twice a week.
The container is placed into the belly of the Hannover – a combined passenger and container ship that regularly sails the West African route (the Canaries, Dakar, Lagos, Cape Town). Wilfried Hermann has to unload the ship before reloading it again, and as he does he notes to himself the main difference between the freight heading to Asia and freight heading to Africa: ships heading to Asia sail with more empty containers than full ones. However, it’s the exact opposite for the ones heading to Africa. Lots of full containers are sent to Africa and then come back empty. This illustrates the fact that Africa, aside from its limited oil resources, is not a big player in the globalised world of today. The Hannover sets off late in the afternoon. It sails back down the River Elbe until it reaches the North German port of Cuxhaven, then across the North Sea and the English Channel, and finally heads south along the Western European coast.
14 November 2007
As the ship passes through the English Channel, engineer Karl Hartmann heads out on deck with a pair of binoculars and looks out to sea. Karl is a ‘Duck Spotter’. He’s looking for ducks bobbing about in the water – a popular hobby for many people who spend lots of time at sea. ‘Duck Spotting’ began in January 1992, when a freighter lost a couple of containers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a storm. One of the containers opened and about 29,000 plastic ducks, beavers, turtles and frogs floated up to the surface. The majority of them drifted south and washed up on the Indonesian and South American coast, and around 10,000 headed northwards through the Bering Sea’s Arctic waters. Sometime in 1995, many of the plastic creatures became frozen in ice. Six years later, near Greenland, they were released when the ice melted and floated into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream then sent them towards Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula.
These unsinkable plastic specimens, bleached by the sun and the saltwater, can be identified by the ‘First Years’ branding stamped into the plastic. If you happen to find one, contact Curtis Ebbesmeyer. For him they are invaluable objects, whose journeys can tell us a lot about global ocean currents. Curtis Ebbesmeyer has even set up a website dedicated to tracking global flotsam: https://beachcombersalert.org/RubberDuckies.html. As well as plastic ducks, the site reports on trainers, glass balls, and the eggs of the mysterious elephant bird.
16 November 2007
Ten hours ago, the Hannover left the northern Spanish port of Bilbao carrying both passengers and containers bound for the Canary Islands. The ship sailed south, parallel to the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, until it reached the Strait of Gibraltar (which is approximately 60 kilometres long). The strait joins the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. On a clear day you can see the coast of Africa from Gibraltar; at this point Europe and Africa are only separated by 14 kilometres of water. At no other point on the planet does the world of the poor and the world of the rich come into such close proximity. When the weather is good you can also see Europe from the Moroccan coast, which for many Africans is a longed-for paradise.
Today, however, everything is hidden in mist. This means that the passengers don’t notice the ship taking a slightly south-westerly course towards Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, the capital of the Canary Islands. Geographically, the Canaries belong to Africa and not to Europe. However, over the course of the last 500 years, so many Spaniards have settled on these islands that they have become a European outpost. A desirable outpost too; all ships heading for America used to stop here first before sailing across the Atlantic. Nowadays, the islands offer visitors ‘a slice of Europe’ with an African climate – sunshine all year round.
18 November 2007
Having delivered and received passengers, the Hannover leaves Las Palmas and heads towards the south-west coast of Africa. It’s now on course for Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Engineer Karl hasn’t found any plastic ducks on this journey. However, that afternoon the officer on duty spots something else that catches his eye, something dangerous: ‘nutshells’. Nutshells are small, wooden fishing boats filled with African refugees, often found floating off into open seas in hope of reaching the Canary Islands. The officer informs the captain of this news.
For captains of ships that take the same routes as refugees, these encounters are often complicated. Not only is the captain obliged to help people in distress at sea, he also wants to help them. But he knows that doing so could cause problems for all parties involved. He asks himself: Do the refugees need help or would they rather be left alone? If he takes them aboard in international waters, there will be the difficult question of where they can disembark. No country is obligated to take refugees. Almost every captain has heard tales of ships taking refugees aboard only to discover that the refugees are simply not welcome anywhere. The refugees will be angry if they’re left in the wrong country, and the shipping companies will be anything but pleased if there’s a hold up in the schedule as it will cost them hundreds of thousands of euros.
However, by the time the captain arrives on the bridge the boat can no longer be spotted with a pair of binoculars and the refugees aren’t responding to radio contact. The captain can see from the radar, however, that they are on course for the Canaries. No rescue is needed, this time. The captain breathes a sigh o
f relief and announces, “Steady as she goes.”
20 November 2007
The Hannover has reached the coast of Senegal which sticks out into the sea like a nose. On its outermost tip is the capital, Dakar, with its suburbs, international airport and fishing village complete with beachside hotels. In the bay, which is on the route to Dakar’s harbour, is the 1,000 metre long island of Gorée. Gorée is known as the ‘Island of Slaves’ and was named by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as a ‘World Heritage Site’. Slaves were once shipped abroad from this island. The ‘Slave House’, a round building painted pink in the centre of the island, is still visible from a distance. There’s a small opening in the wall of the building, which became famously known as the ‘Door of No Return’. The Africans who went through it never saw their homes again. After being locked in small cells for a week they would be squeezed like livestock onto ships. It was well known that many would die on the transatlantic journey from illness, hunger and thirst. The cane sugar and tobacco plantations in South America and the Caribbean needed workers who could toil in immense heat. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, somewhere between 10 and 50 million Africans were abducted from their homes in the first and most cruel wave of globalisation of modern times.
Senegal: Poor Country, Rich Country
Like many West African countries, Senegal is a fairly poor country due to a recent and dramatic population increase. The population has doubled in the last 20 years, so around half of the 12 million Senegalese citizens are less than 20 years old and two thirds of them can neither read nor write. Poor nourishment and a shortage of medical care contribute to the reason why, on average, men only live until they’re 55 and women until they’re 57.
Senegal is located in the Sahel region, the place between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian savannah of the South. A large part of this land is dry savannah – only 16 per cent of the area is fertile, and unfortunately this land is poorly used. Although two thirds of the population work on the land, Senegal cannot produce even half of the food its people need.
Why is this? For 300 years Senegal was a French colony and only gained its independence in 1960. Like most African countries during the colonial period, Senegal was forced to produce very specific products for export. In Senegal these were predominantly peanuts and cotton, which are still produced in large quantities today. The price of these products on the world market has fallen dramatically over the last decade because the USA provides huge financial support to its own cotton and peanut farms (and the EU does exactly the same thing within other areas of agriculture). Because of this, only 20 per cent of national wealth in Senegal comes from farming.
Many Senegalese have moved from the countryside to the cities to try and escape the growing poverty and desperation in the rural areas. As work is also hard to come by in the cities, most people have to get by selling whatever they can: food, lottery tickets, furniture, souvenirs for tourists, clothes and so on. Yet Senegal also has some of the best-developed road networks in Africa. Furthermore, the harbour in Dakar is the second largest and one of the most modern in West Africa. Surrounding the harbour are thriving sugar, vegetable oil, fish and textile industries.
21 November 2007
A crane lifts 40 to 50 containers onto the dockside at Dakar harbour. Everything is more chaotic here than the container harbours of Hamburg and Singapore. Here, the cranes grab containers and put them wherever there is a free space, with very little forward planning.
It’s often said that globalisation exploits developing countries – particularly those in Africa. Many people are still under the impression that Africans have the majority of what they produce taken away from them, just like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At this time Africa was the world’s greatest exporter of raw materials, spices and exotic goods, and the large industrialised nations of the West fought to colonise it. These days, the opposite is true: dozens of full containers are unloaded from the ships that arrive there and very few full ones are returned. Sometimes, even empty containers are loaded back onto the ships, because there’s no container storage space left at the harbour.
Is this exploitation? This depends on which products are being transported. It’s not only old clothes from Europe that are flooding into Africa. On the dockside are also hundreds of old cars which have been shipped from Europe to Africa. Other containers are loaded with food, for example, onions from Holland, beef from Germany and so on. All of these products come from rich countries and have been on very long journeys. Nevertheless, they are sold in Senegal for way below their cost price. The Senegalese buy these products because they are cheap, which means the local farmers who produce food in Senegal barely earn anything. All of this food, which has been shipped in these containers has been heavily subsidised by the European Union. This means that the EU pays its farmers for every onion and pint of milk, which makes it possible for the food to be sold so cheaply in Africa.
The receiver of the old clothing container waits at the entrance to the harbour: Moustapha received the paperwork for the shipment by fax from Hamburg and has come immediately to pick it up. He’s brought all the paperwork with him, but the harbour manager informs him that unfortunately his container doesn’t seem to be there.
Disappointed, Moustapha heads back to the pick-up truck and tells the driver to wait while he heads back to his office to call Hamburg. In Hamburg they tell him that the container has to be there.
22 November 2007
First thing the next morning, Moustapha goes looking for the container. He studies the markings on the side of each metal box trying to find the one that belongs to him. Eventually, after half an hour in the unbearable heat, he finds it. He goes back to the harbour offices, and sure enough, his container’s details still aren’t on the harbour’s received freight list.
After much pleading, one of the harbour managers agrees to go to the spot where the container is.
“Well I’ll be damned! It’s like magic! It really is here!” the manager exclaims.
However, the manager’s original feelings of relief quickly change to confusion. The container shouldn’t be here as it’s not on their list. He decideds to speak to his colleagues about the situation. After 30 minutes the manager returns and tells Moustapha, “This is a big problem. We need to speak with the Ministry of Trade.” Moustapha can’t take any more. He takes one of the customs officers to a quiet corner. They speak quickly – hands are raised over and over and they both sigh many times in frustration. Eventually, as in Bangladesh, a small envelope changes hands . . .
When they finally return, everything’s been sorted out. The problem with the list is suddenly no longer important and tomorrow the container will magically appear on the list. Two hours later a crane will then load the container onto the truck that’s been waiting since yesterday.
They can finally get going – but now the pick-up truck won’t start. Moustapha looks at the driver, who shrugs his shoulders. “It was working yesterday,” he mutters. A stranger leans into the cab. “Do you want me to go get some petrol? I have a bike and I’m as fast as the wind!”
The driver waves him away. He picks up a hammer, climbs out of the truck and opens the bonnet. The truck is immediately surrounded by men. As long as you’re not in the Sahara, you’re never alone in Africa. The men give out advice and make jokes while they wait for the moment they can help someone load or unload a truck. That way they can earn a few CFA francs (CFA is the abbreviation for Senegal’s currency: franc de la Communauté Financière Africaine) – though they’d prefer euros. The driver hits the engine here and there with the hammer, fiddles with the piston rings and curses loudly.
“Shall I go and get some petrol?” one of the men asks.
“Get lost!” snaps the driver.
After half an hour he finds the problem: the petrol tank is empty. The driver had left the car running with the air conditioning on because it was so hot. Three men fight over
the petrol can. One of them is victorious and gets his friend – the one with the bike – to take them to the next petrol station. A quarter of an hour later they’re back with the petrol.
Finally, the driver and Moustapha can leave. They drive through the capital at a snail’s pace: vans, buses, trucks, cyclists, mopeds and a crowd of people are clogging up the road. This means that we have plenty of time to take a look around.
Dakar has around two million inhabitants – making it about the same size as Hamburg (or twice the size of Birmingham in the UK). The city appears to have been cobbled together without much forward planning. High-rise blocks tower over mud huts, while stylish hotels, bars and shops stand next to shacks made out of plywood and corrugated iron. Thousands of colourful handkerchiefs flutter between buildings: the Senegalese may be quite poor, but life here is loud, fun and colourful. They love music; you can hear it everywhere on the streets, from Caribbean dancehall to salsa. Above all however, there is an African mix of funk and pop, known as ‘mbalax’, which was made famous by Senegalese musicians Youssou N’Dour and Omar Pene. Like all Africans, the Senegalese also love vivid colours, especially the women who wear colourful clothing or traditional robes called boubous which are covered in vivid patterns. The men cover their cars, fishing boats, signs above their shops and whatever else is important to them with colourful patterns too. There are a lot of horns sounding on the roads today – everybody wants everyone else to get out of the way because they think they’re in the biggest rush!
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