Many of our children have a parent(s) who is an ‘unskilled laborer’. People have told me that if a child has a parent(s), especially a working parent(s), then the child should not be in our home. Let me explain what ‘unskilled laborer’ means.
Many goods are piled precariously on 50 year old, dilapidated bicycles, on flatbed carts attached to bicycles, or on small ancient trucks (lorries). Some workers cannot even afford a derelict bicycle so they pull a flatbed cart, straining under the load.
In certain areas rickshaws are common. They are used to carry people from one place to another or to haul loads. Yet another form of transport is to carry either by strapping the goods on one’s back or loading the items in a doko, a hand woven basket carried on the back with a strap around the forehead.
Another type of unskilled labor is roadwork or house construction. Unskilled day laborers haul gravel, water, wood, rebar or other items to the job site. When asphalt is poured ‘semi-skilled’ laborers literally squat next to the hot liquid tar and smooth it with a trowel while another laborer places pieces of gravel into the smooth surface approximately 2 inches apart to act as tread on the road.
When a job requires concrete a small portable mixer might be nearby or more likely the concrete is mixed in a mound on the ground. Either way, a person, usually a woman lugs metal disks about the size of 4 dinner plates filled with wet cement to and from the place where the concrete is needed.
‘Breaking rock’ is another common unskilled task. People gather at a streambed here they literally ‘break’ rock with a hammer into smaller pieces the size of gravel. Once they have broken enough rock to fill a doko they tote the gravel to a job site where they are paid by the load. The job sites are rarely nearby and the laborer walks long distances, usually uphill, to deliver the loads.
These jobs and many more are backbreaking, energy intensive work yet the wages are scandalously miniscule. Such a laborer cannot support one person, much less a family but sadly there are no better options for uneducated people in this part of the world.