Paynesville City – Sitting behind bunches of riped plantain, Ma Nuwah – a petty trader, struggles to drive away flies as she anticipates a buyer on a cloudy day in Red-Light market district.
Report by Alpha Daffae Senkpeni, [email protected]
Notorious for its hectic traffic, filth, criminals and drug addicts, Red Light Market is Liberia’s largest commercial district located outside Monrovia.
Ma Nuwah and other female marketers sat under the drizzling weather about a hundred foot away from a stock pile of garbage – the rodents and stench annoying passersby.
No buyer had showed up in more than two hours as an army of buzzing flies maneuvered through the verities of farm products spread across the wet ground.
The stench is a nuisance, but she must sell to cater to her husband and nine children. Her husband is physically impaired due to a tragic motor accident a year ago.
Before his ordeal, he was deemed surplus to the Liberian National Police and layoff by the government.
Worried about the slow sales, Nuwah is disappointed that she has no savings to pay her kids’ fees for the upcoming academic year.
“I do not have money to pay their (children) school fees,” she complains. “Business is not good these days and we have a lot of family things (responsibilities) to do so it is not easy on me.”
Ma Nuwah is one of hundreds of female Liberian marketers dubbed ‘the Gobachop Women’, who tussle daily amongst the crowd of people and vehicles to credit farm produce aboard turbo trucks from up country, sell them instantaneously to reap profits for themselves.
Liberia’s relationship with Russia is sparse but it is the name of one of the communist nation’s ex-Presidents, Mikhail Gorbachev that has stuck indelibly on these female marketers.
Gorbachev’s grip on the Soviet Union slacked-off when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, leaving officials of state owned businesses to transform what was then public to their private gain.
Similarly, Liberia diving into civil crisis in 1989 witnessed rebels’ invasion as many engaged in a looting spree liken to what was then occurring in the Soviet Union.
“It is a (bit) better than buying goods from the store (imported goods),” Nuweh justifies for being a Gobachop marketer.
Though the profit of doing ‘gobachop market’ is far better, the task is colossal. But she says her primary concern is to cater for her children despite the enormous challenges.
“When you ask for the school fees of an elementary student you will have to pay LD$10,000.00, which is too high for poor women like us selling here. The price of a bag of rice is going up and we have to find food for our children every day.”
With over 25 years of doing ‘Gobachop’, she says the business environment is becoming more complicated and unfavorable for women.
Annie Peter, 35, is a mother of five children; her husband is unemployed too. Like Ma Nuwah, Annie sells whatever commodity she grabs from a slow-moving truck loaded with farm produce.
“We have to depend on whatever the people bring from up interior,” she said with a bold face. “This is the only way I will be able to sell and feed my children and also pay their school fees.”
Liberia has a population of over 4.5 million people and a struggling economy has been worsened by the scourge of the Ebola virus.
The Liberian dollar is now trading LD$ 98.00 to 1 US dollar making the current devaluation of the Liberian dollar the worst in the country’s recent history.
A World Bank report shows that in 2015 Africa’s oldest republic had a GDP of $2.053 with a growth rate of 0.3% and scores of youth including young female graduates are bewildering the lack of job opportunities in a country headed by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf – Africa’s first female President.
Liberia’s 2010 labor survey states that 47,000 women are employed nationwide compared to 148,000 men leaving many unskilled Liberians including women venturing into petit trading and businesses like ‘Gobachop’.
38 year old high school graduate Hannah Jesses says selling is her ultimate option because she won’t opt for prostitution.
Victimized by the second phase of the Liberian civil war that ended in 2003 when she lost all her financial resources to rebel forces, Hannah moved to Monrovia in 2004 and ventured into ‘the Gobachop trade’.
She’s now delaying her college education to support her husband who is studying agriculture science at the University of Liberia.
“The both of us cannot go to college so I’m helping to take care of the home while he’s attending school,” the mother of two children said while smiling and rolling her eyes.
Compounded with the economic challenges, many female red Light marketers say they are also terrorized by criminal hangs and drug users. At least 500 female marketers have been attacked in the area this year alone.
A local police source argues that slum communities near the market ‘live on crime’.
“If you go into the community and determine the root causes of these crimes, you find out that some people are breeding these drug addicts and criminals,” the anonymous Police source said.
The police source said they are struggling to curb crime because of several issues including low logistical support.
Since the end of the civil war, the country’s police have heavily depended on United Nations forces but with the forces pulling out in July this year the need for more budgetary support has heightened.
Former LNP Inspector General, Chris Massaquoi, in May 2016 launched a global appeal for more support and with the entire security sector of the country draft national budget 2016/2017 is only about US$90M, observers of the sector fear that there might be more constraints in dealing with crime like the frequent ones occurring in Red-light and its environs.
But for the Gobachop women, they are concern about criminal snapping away her bags, but are more wary about how these vices could influence their kids.
“More children are spoiling in this area; there’s no understanding, they are on the streets taking drugs and I’m concern about them but very concern for (about) my children,” Annie said with a cranky tune. “
“Our children are growing up and the way they are seeing other children behaving is making me afraid.”
For Ma Nuwah, her aging life depends on her children with the hope they can reciprocate the sacrifices when she’s unable to ramble through the crowd and sell a bag of plantains.
“I’m praying that when I’m very old, our children will be able to take care of us because I will not be able to sell this same market again,” she said faintly.