By Tanu Jalloh
The economy is sick right now. When movement of people stalls, no matter the legitimacy that informs it and the consideration that respects it, there is always the likelihood of some attendant social and economic effects.
A sick economy portends bad signs especially for a literally sick people. How can the sick take care of their dead when they are poor and there is no money to do so? The few who can afford to bury their deaddon’t get to spend on pre and post burial meetings nowadays. Strangers take care of corpses in the epicentre of the outbreak. No respect; no befitting send-off and no public display of thanksgiving. All of these commemorations take the form of an economic activity around a certain set of people. The local economy is affected in a way and some money is pumped into that locality in many respects.
You will agree with me that the financial demands that come with most traditional burial rite, across religions, ethnic values and traditions,may have been curtailed or even abolished by the advent of the deadly Ebola outbreak.In Sierra Leone like her neighbours, Liberia and Guinea, the dead is respected in many ways. For certain groups - some of whose people are interrelated, obviously share common standards, and are dotted along the borders of all three countries,- you don’t talk against or say anything bad about the dead.
However, in a normal circumstance and this is mostly the case, money that could not have been expended on medical billsis sometimes gleefully set aside for a funeral rite. And because it is apparently a one-off celebration and one thatattracts contributions from sympathisers and relatives, in cash and in kind, people can afford and are willing to make a burial rite even more colourfully festive. That economic activity too, is constrained now. The aggregate informal economic activity that comes in these forms is a routine lubricant to the cog of the economy of that locality.
We have an emergency at hand. Today ‘the dead is not respected’, not because the expenses to feed visitors and transport sympathisers are not justified, but because it is by law prohibitive and does not make any economic sense in the current scheme of things. That economic restraint on such rituals and social expendituresseems to have come as a relief to some. Mostly,poor peopleare under some sort of pressure to conform to societal demands and bury their dead with all their wealth. This is certainly not generally welcome in a crisis period like this. Burial ceremonies are for the most part commemorative in nature and can be occasioned by revelries and vigilsamong a good number of cultural settings in Sierra Leone.
Let’s attempt to look at the bigger picture of an ailing economy, using such references as may be related to the everyday businesses and lifestyles of a people. First, we explore from thosesomewhat infinitesimal issues of basic lending among a people for funeral rite; to the micro instances of intra and inter provincial and cross border trading with neighbouring countries in the Mano River Union basin; and finally to the macroeconomic policy arrangements that provide directions for a country. Each and every one of these strata is problematic at the moment.They are all literally sick.
For the purpose of this piece I am confined to the basics of economic activity insofar as they relate to the preoccupation of a people grappling with the haemorrhagic Ebola virus. Almost all the accounts on the economic effects of Ebola, as carried by the media, seem to deal with and emphasise the macro aspects – the third scenario I referred to in this article.I choose the first of the three scenariosto narrow the accounts being given on the outbreak to such issues as burial rite and the local economies.
This is the archetypal local economy that thrives on familial economic interactivity – i.e. borrowing and paying debts owe to immediate and distant relatives in cash or in kind to save sick lives. A desperate family, whose siblings are sick, wakes up in the pitch of late night darkness and knocks on the door of a neighbour for assistance. In most cases they get it, either in the form of a hand-out or loans. No bargaining. They don’t need a third partyin lieu of a guarantor, but also in case of a default of payment. That was how healthy it was before the Ebola outbreak that surges from the epicentres in east and keeps escalating through the south to the north and Western Area. The only exception for now is Koinadugu district in the north, where no confirmed case has been reported.
In the scenario above, the only collateral that is required at this stratum of economic activity in a country like Sierra Leone is respect for the potential debtor, conscientious leverages and societal standing.That confidence is now being undermined by a phobia of an outbreak whose mystery is way beyond the current economic readiness of the country. This is indicative of asheer paucity of hope in a people whose social makeup cannot now be supported by their economic power. In essence business is sick and certainly not healthy at that layer of society.
Now to the micro instances of intra and inter provincial and cross border trading with neighbouring countries in the Mano River Union basin. The epicentres of Kailahun and Kenema, for example, grow and supply cocoa and coffee, mostly for export purposes and foreign exchange earnings. They also process and sell bush meat, especially dried monkey meat to neighbouring Liberia.
Diamond mining, at alluvial levels, hasalso been halted in the east of the country; the concomitant effects are being felt by miners and their families some of whom have abandoned their farmlands long ago. Again those numerous dealers along Hanga Road in Kenema cannot trade in the bright stones now because the pits in the buses are forbidden.The bug has hit the southern city of Bo, once a beehive of actions, nights-out and a bustling terrain of southern provincial economy. On a normal day, it attracts a good number of people from Freetown, especiallyat weekends because of the apparent largeness of its pool of socialites and varieties of social spots.
Today, I am among a great many people who can’t travel to Bo because the economy of Kenema is sick. I am among that people, who on a normal day, will live to leave Freetown on a weekend to attend a funeral rite of a distant relative whose burial they only get to know about on the eve of the day of his internment. The truth is,part of the preparation for such a trip will include taking along some money to meet some people and have some time together. But for the meantime there is no more burial rite. So we can’t be part of the local economy in Bo and the epicentres in Kenema and Kailahun.
(C) Politico 14/08/14
