So here's a little story from the street...
Got off the trotro in front of my work and stopped by my favourite coconut vendor. He greets me every day with a smile so big it makes the sun appear from behind the clouds. I sat down on his bench in the morning heat, drinking and munching on my coconut. I asked him about his business, which proved quite insightful. He sells 100 coconuts a day at 50 peswas each. So he makes 50 cedi per day, which sounds ok until I realised that the poor guy pays 40 cedi for his produce. So he's left with 10 cedi per day or somewhere between 200 and 300 cedi per month, which is not much considering he's standing by the roadside all day, chops 100 coconuts at 30+ degrees and has to pull his cart half way across the city.
Puts our complaint into perspective when we were asking for an increase in the allowance because we struggled to live on what we were payed! And the guy probably has a family to feed as well.
So I started paying him 1 cedi for the coconut and will think hard about haggling with street vendors in the future :)
Kwame
Someone once told me that the average income is around 100 cedis a month! Whoa!
ReplyDeleteAlso I saw the payroll for some of the full time staff where I was working and it wasn't too much more than what the coconut guy is getting paid :(
Hope you guys are keeping well.
Ok i was misled. It is more than 100 but this site has some interesting stats: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/ghana_statistics.html
ReplyDeleteHey Sid,
ReplyDeleteWe're well thanks and I was just thinking about your stay in Ghana this morning :)
You're right, the GNI per capita (US$) is 670 and 30% of population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day... according to the stats!
A coconut costs US$0.40. That means 30% of the population probably can't afford one...
Hope you're well!
x M