OUTDOOR MERCHANTS

Evening Star, Issue 22308, 7 April 1936, Page 12

OUTDOOR MERCHANTS

SHOPPING IN ADDIS ABABA '' ' $ In Ethiopia, trucks for short hauls are the heads of men and the shoulders of women. For long hauls they are mules and camels. Mules are cheap, and man power is still cheaper; nevertheless, this method of transportation is expensive (writes R. H. Markham in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). It costs much more to take a bag of coffee 300 miles m Ethiopia than to produce the 'coffee. For that reason, exports are almost ml, and internal prices . are exceedingly low. The total foreign trade of a land bigger than Germany, with a population larger than that of Belgium, is less than that of any European country except Albania. Ethiopia is incomparably richer than Switzerland and 31 times as large, yet its foreign trade is only a tiny fraction of that of the little republic. Internal commerce is also greatly limited. Most commodities are marketed near where they are raised, and go direct from producer to consumer. When middlemen are used they retain but the smallest profits. Most retail merchants are women, content to earn 15 cents a day, although they work frcto 9 in the morning until 7 at night. The Ethiopians are outdoor merchants. As a rule, they have no stores. Some of them are peddlers and come to your door. A European can get practically all of his groceries every day without stirring from his yard. Men and boys appear carrying almost everything one may wish in boxes on their heads. And they offer their wares exceedingly cheap. If you were among the 1 per cent, of the people who wear native sandal-like shoes, you’d pay one dollar fifty cents a pair. If you belonged to the one-fifth of .1 per cent, wearing “ European shoes, 1 they would cost you more than in America or England.

BY THE SWEAT OF THEIR BROW. If you were lucky enough here to be a Government employee, you would receive from three dollars to 20 dollars monthly unless you had a very high position. But, of course, everybody can t work for the Government—even in America or Rumania, and how much less in a primitive land like Ethiopia. Some poor unfortunates must scurry about and earn their pancakes by the sweat of their brows. Some of these, and especially the women, do it by buying and selling. Their selling places are secured by the right of squatter sovereignty, and they squat upon them all day long with their merchandise arranged in penny piles upon a piece of cloth before them. Each little pile of such valuable commodities as salt, _ coffee, red pepper, nuts, and spices is measured out in tiny Turkish cups, less valuable things such as flour in drinking glasses, and the customer ties each article separately in his toga so that all paper sacks are dispensed with. There are no overhead expenses, no store rent, no scales, no cash register, no travelling salesmen.

■ In the more aristocratic part of the market, where the finest spices are sold, you .find scales, and the weights are pieces of money—thalers, half-thalers, dimes, etc. These spices are worth their weight in silver. You put your Sioney, on one side of the scales, balance

it with spices on the other, pour them into the corner of your servant’s toga, and take them home to flavour a pie or beverage. The wholesale dealers bring wheat, peas, flour, chickens, meal, and cheeses into town in sheepskin bags on the backs of donkeys. The women gather around, and, after bargaining hard, each one buys a sack or two and sends it to her tukul on a porter’s head. The porter may be her husband, for they are ‘both Gurages, settlers here from a district 100 miles away, and the hardiest and thriftiest people in Africa. It is striking that these ragged men who carry burdens and dig ditches, and those wretchedly dressed women who squat on the'damp ground all day long trying to sell tiny piles of the cheapest merchandise, are the foremost moneyearners in the land, and progressing faster than most of the other tribal groups.

The merchandise, however, does not always come from wholesale dealers, for . the women often have relatives in the country who send produce in to them, so that they are really selling stuff from home on a co-operative basis. Each morning the woman merchant takes a sack of her stuff, carries it to her squatting place, and spreads it out before the public. During certain seasons it rains here twice a day in torrents, and at such times she gathers up her wares to seek shelter under some friendly roof. Hardly has the last drop of rain fallen before she opens her store again. Hundreds of these women are strung along the busiest streets, and still more squat in dense groups in market squares. A few of them have platforms of loosely piled stones under them and crude roofs made of kerosene tins above them. ETHIOPIAN BAKERS. Many women sell bread. They are the Ethiopian bakers. Each prepares 50 big, soft, dark grey pancakes on her griddle every morning, and carries them in a huge covered basket to some street corner. Here she squats upon the ground, with many competitors, waiting for customers. The bread feels like a rubber rug, but is very tender, and, though a trifle sour and bitter, is decidedly edible. It .is made from fine millet seed called teff, and is the principal food of the Ethiopian nation. It is baked on campfires in or out of doors, for _ the _ Ethiopians have no stoves. It is set in the evening, allowed to rise during the night, and diluted to a thin batter in the morning. Another sort of Ethiopian brown bread, resembling that used in western lands, is made by wrapping dough in a large green banana leaf and completely covering it, above and below, with glowing coals. When the coals cool the bread is dpne. Nomads have made such bread for many millennia. The only utensils it requires are a small black earthern jar containing old, fermenting dough to serve as yeast, and a wooden bowl for mixing and kneading. Ail big business in town is done by foreigners. Almost all closed shops are owned by Arabs and Indians. All middlemen between the peasants and foreign exporters are Ethiopians. All caravan managers carrying money out of the provinces and or hides back are Ethiopians. The open air is part of their nomad nature, and they cannot conduct closed shops. They like the open road, the open market place, hefty bargaining, and dramatic outdoor lawsuits. For them business is still a sport. They haggle hard, but keep their word, and love to bring their camels to the end of a 20-clay trek with every sack intact and every thaler accounted for.