Wages

If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you may have noticed the recurring themes relating to money and the challenges created by the huge disparities in the amount of money people have and earn locally. How we are dealing with these disparities in our daily lives has regularly worked itself into conversations with friends (often over overpriced drinks in posh restaurants…). For example, one friend was recently was robbed while dancing in a night club, and we were all curious to know how much money she gave the helpful policeman, magistrate, and phone company employee for the search warrant, phone usage information, cell phone talk-time, taxi fares, and other services related to the investigation that lead to the successful recovery of her phone.

The topic of wages has also come up quite often. As I know I have reflected on in this blog before, this is a challenging topic because of the wide variation of living costs and wages that seems to be acceptable locally. It also is challenging because I, as a volunteer, am compensated better financially than almost every Zambian I work with. Guilt weighs in from time to time.

My current flat mate (a Zambian working for an American non-profit working on sports and life skills education projects) and I recently decided after some conversation to raise the wages of our maid, who works two mornings a week, from about $40 a month to about $47 a month because she had been working at the house for a year and because her transportation costs had gone up. The increase isn’t much, for sure, but the discussion was still long because the quality of her work was in question and we knew that we were already paying more than she would earn in most other households. Hiring a maid is considered by many to be an important way to increase employment, but it is also considered important to pay the proper wages. If expats and others with higher income pay wages that seem reasonable to them, then the average Zambian will find it almost impossible to find domestic help that is affordable for them.

So what is affordable to the average Zambian? It’s hard to say, given the earnings disparity. As reported before, there are people (of all colors) locally earning impressive wages by working for large international NGO’s and a few corporations. People also can be a bit shy about sharing what their wages actually are. Given the research I’ve been able to do, though, a government high school teacher, if working both the morning and afternoon school sessions, would be earning something in the range of $300 - $450 a month before taxes (including a housing allowance instead of on-campus housing). Not much. A teacher at a small local private school would probably earn half that, but would have a better chance of wages being paid on time and in-full since the government isn’t involved.

While these low wages are often a source of shock to me, it does help me to remember the context of these wages. If everyone in your neighborhood is earning similar wages, then rents will be low ($100 - $200 a month, as opposed to the $1000 for my furnished house), and school fees for your children kept reasonable. Costs for staple foods are also relatively cheap (although protein sources other than beans can be a challenge). Problems arise for sure, though, when people in these situations try to plan for the future. Saving for retirement, education, and emergencies is clearly quite difficult when faced with immediate priorities such as paying for food and shelter. There are also cultural challenges to saving money. If you have money in your pocket, it’s considered to be money you can lend to a friend or relative who has none. Also, if you are the only person in your extended family earning a wage, you can be expected to loan money, provide housing, or pay school fees for relatives who are less well off. Every time I bring up how unfair this seems to be with a Zambian, the response has been “Where else is the money going to come from?” Hard to argue with that logic.