Those that can't...

Unemployment sucks. It not only deprives you of your financial security, but also your dignity and respect. You have to ask for help, you have to show your shame. In the UK, it's the welfare office but in Sudan, there is another kind of social insurance institution: the family. 

Sudanese family members help each other out---without question. If you can't find a job, your parents will happily support you until you do. It doesn't matter how old you are, if you need it, someone in your family will look after you. 

Older interviewees talk about how this "cushion" makes youngsters too picky or over-ambitious in their job search. Instead of getting a job at the bottom of a company and working their way up, they say that young Sudanese want to start at the top. They are not patient enough for the workforce. They say that in the past, they had to earn their positions through hard work. 

Part of the problem is that most jobs today do not involve training and promotion like they did in the past. A company that offers recent graduates training will see it as a favor, not as a necessity. Young graduates simply don't want to get stuck in a job for five, ten years without further training. Their qualifications will become void and they will not be able to improve their position. It may pay to be picky. (and I would add, that it is difficult for young people to get any kind of job at all!) 

If you can't study, one alternative is to study. If you can't find a job with a bachelor degree, you can do a masters. If you can't find a job with a masters, you can do a PhD. This up-hill educational slide is especially true of women. While a young man must think of saving for his wedding day, young women are less constrained financially and are therefore more able to pursue their professional ambitions. In certain fields, like architecture or bio-chemistry, for instance, I have been told that women dominate because there are so few jobs, men opt out for more profitable but less professionally ambitious careers. Women stick it out. As Sudanese culture places a huge emphasis on education, further education for women is seen as a worthy pursuit. 

I recently spoke with Hind Abbas Ibrahim, a communications professor at the University of Khartoum and she commented that this uphill slide was the one positive side of unemployment in Sudan... but I have noticed yet another silver lining. 

If you can't get a job, you can volunteer. So many of my Sudanese friends volunteer and give considerable portions of their free time to social organizations and charities... and especially those without jobs. It is seen as a good way to wait for a job.

Long ago, I was a volunteer research assistant at the Population Council in Cairo. I was helping out on their study of the costs of marriage and Gulf migration. I remember reading an article about how Egyptian unemployed young men were "bare branches" and might pose a security risk. The rise of harassment has also been blamed on this economic state of affairs. While this is possibly true of Egypt, I feel that in some ways, these bare branches might also be positive in other parts of the world.  

You could say: There are a great number of young, educated Sudanese who are extremely frustrated by their economic situation and could pose a security risk to the public. They are dangerous!

But you could also say: There are a great number of young, educated Sudanese who have plenty of free time which they do not want to waste at home. They are brimming with potential and are ready to volunteer for good!

Just a thought...

Ticket to Ride: the nice amjad

I just got back from a meeting with my University of Khartoum supervisor. He is such a lovely man so I was already in a happy buoyant mood when I left his office.

On my way back, feeling hot and decidedly lazy, I decided to treat myself to a taxi.

These days I am smart enough to ask taxi drivers if they have other jobs. They usually do. Some are journalists. Some are teachers. Some are traders of some stripe… and they are always happy to grumble about the labour market. Today my taxi driver told me he was an “agent”.

Exciting! I thought.

A government agent? I asked. My mind buzzed: Don’t talk about politics, Laura, don’t don’t about politics. Whatever you do, Laura do not talk about politics!

No, he said, I am a private agent.

Private agent, heh? This sounds even more interesting.

What kind of field? I asked.

Visas, travel documents. That kind of thing.

(Ah, I forgot about the other meaning of agent. My heart dipped.)

But not for the government? I asked.

No, no. I worked at the airport for three years after university. Now I work for companies. Gulf companies. I call the airport and the ministry and sort it out. If someone wants to go to Europe, I ask a friend. I don't have the right connections for Europe. 

Do you make more money now?

Yes, of course. I take a cut. I take 30% for the Gulf. 10% for Europe. We do everything for them. Fast. Lots of people want to go to the Gulf these days. Foreigners and Sudanese, we arrange both.

I asked him if lots of people did the same; acquiring “wasta” in a government job, then moving on to the private sector to make more money. He said it’s pretty common. About 40% of people do the same. He estimated.

At the end of my journey, I went to fetch my wallet.

No, no! He said. You don’t pay.

I took out my wallet.

No, no! Really!

Are you sure? I asked. Surely someone can’t be so nice to put up with my rigorour line of questioning, drive me across town and then require no payment? 

Yes, you don’t have to pay. He said, smiling. And then he drove away.

What a nice man! 

A fine privilege for being a student! Shukran Sudan!

Vocational Training in Mayo: an eye-opener.

Over the past couple weeks I have been visiting a Sudanese charity called “Together for Sudan”. I originally got in contact with them because they provide university scholarships to women from less economically developed parts of the country.  I was very frustrated with my original sample of university graduates, as there was little diversity. I was trying to cast my net wider (but in a very timid way)…

This week, Together for Sudan took me to Mayo, an area on the edge of Khartoum to see a vocational training centre they help run. I suppose it was a chance to see “how the other half live”.  I had heard a lot about the area: ”it is dangerous”, “it is where people from the South live”, “be careful there!” so I was curious to see it for myself. I had been there once before, sort of by accident (an unexpected bus turn led to a whole new landscape and a very puzzled Laura) but at the time, I didn’t really get “deep” into the neighborhood. This was my chance.

The vocational centre is run by St. Vincents and has a strong relationship with a local church. They offer electrical engineering classes, computer literacy classes and a “refrigerator” unit to train people how to fix refrigerators (obviously very important in Sudan!).  After the training, graduates go out into the world to find their own jobs (handymen have an interesting way of getting employment of which I will write another post about one day).

This is apparently what the inside of a refrigerator looks like.

The centre also runs health training for predominantly female groups. This is the project that Together for Sudan funds. The current health class is about to graduate in a week: 90 women, 10 men (the men were all at the back and seemed curiously quiet amidst the female majority). They will now move on to the hospital part of the program and after that, employment (insh’allah)! The students come from all over Sudan, ranging from Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, Darfur and the East. They are a variety of ages, from 16 to the ambiguously described “old” (The women at the back of the class were described as “old” but they didn’t look particularly old to me; they did however, look more “reserved” I was instructed to take a separate photo of them).

The not so elderly "elderly" at the back of the class.

It was a funny situation. I wasn’t entirely sure why I had been placed in front of the class (100 eyes staring at me, inquisitively) and it was obvious that the students weren’t entirely sure what I was doing there either. I suppose Together for Sudan was proud of their program and wanted me to see it with my own eyes. And I can understand why. The room was full of positivity. The teacher was very charismatic and it was clear that the students liked him and respected him a great deal.

The teacher.

Victor, my friend from Together for Sudan (and the one who organized the trip) asked me if I had any questions for them and (after a brief panic of “shit, I have to speak Arabic in front of 100 people?”) I managed to get into the swing and ask them some questions. They in turn got to ask me questions.

You know, I have gotten so obsessed with university graduates that I have really closed my eyes to the other routes to employment. Of course, I see people from a variety of different backgrounds every day in the street, in offices, on the bus and even living next-door to me, but just getting the chance to talk to aspirational young people trying to acquire some training to get ahead in the job market, it was a real eye-opener. I am planning on going back to visit them after their training at the hospital to see how they get on in finding jobs. Some of them said that they had friends who did the same course who are now working, so this is a good sign.

I suppose what the trip really did was widen my scope. I have become totally obsessed with “focusing my research”. From “trust in the economy” to “getting a job” to “getting a job after university” to “getting a job after graduation from the University of Khartoum’s engineering department in 2007” that I almost have nightmares about it. I have become short sighted- staring shyly from my own self-imposed spectacles. That is the tricky thing about research: knowing where to draw the line and realizing when you have drawn it too tightly. I am now trying to re-draw that line.

I shouldn't forget that my project is ultimately about trust and social mobility; whether people are able to transcend whatever their social class, ethnic group or geographical origin to become part of a “Sudanese labour market” (if there is such a thing) and whether or not the economy is moving in such a way as to encourage less personal routes to employment. Lately I have realized that I don’t just need to look at different sectors (private, foreign, government) but also different fields as well. Some fields are clearly more accessible than others for “outsiders”. The trick is to find a way to compare and contrast between fields without comparing apples and well, guavas.

From now on, I resolve myself to be more open-minded about my research participants, more creative in my methods and more persistent in my gathering of contacts. Insh'allah...