BBC NEWS: In pictures: Ghana's market girls - the Kayayo

[SealLion]

a Very nice slide show presents itself here on the BBC website. Have a look.

It's about these people in Ghana, the Kayayo, as these women and girls are called travel to the larger centers of Ghana to find work of which, according to the slide show presentation, offers meagre living. When they travel to the larger centers in Ghana, they mostly work as porters.

The Kayayo also travel to the city to escape the village life.
A lot of the women there, supposedly work at some other meagre paying jobs that are physically demanding.

there isn't really a whole lot of info that I found in the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the Kayayo. As a matter of fact, there was nothing. And to think I spent 2 days downloading the damn thing.

Anyways, here's the link. It's a short 2 min. presentation that also basically highlights how poor Africans are. What a comparison to how you and I have it, yes??

The most unfortunate thing in all of this with respect to these people is that poverty will always be with them.
Even if it is forced upon them by others

A little off topic here: Poverty, is one of the reasons that things such as poaching exists in Africa, if you have never thought about that before. Poaching is a demand from places like Europe (spank those Europeans, will ya)

so think about that next time you see or hear some documentary on poaching in Africa. I'm not talking about poaching in places like North America. The demand for poaching there is centered mostly for Asian markets.


Enjoy the slide show. It's not too bad.

Here''s the link:

BBC News - In pictures: Ghana's market girls - the Kayayo

[slikrapid]

It's about these people in Ghana, the Kayayo, as these women and girls are called travel to the larger centers of Ghana to find work of which, according to the slide show presentation, offers meagre living. When they travel to the larger centers in Ghana, they mostly work as porters.

here some more info with sort of a documentary on them:

The Untold Stories of Ghana's Kayayo (Market Girls)

http://www.circumspecte.com/search/label/market

On Myths and Poverty

http://untoldstories.pulitzercenter.org/2009/02/on-myths-and-poverty.html?cid=6a00d834520a2e69e20128779098bc970c

basically, they are 'forced' (out of poverty, induced by government/local people negligence) to leave their villages trying to find some work in the town markets and what they can get is, roughly speaking, either hard physical work (as most male workers do) as 'carriers' or prostitutes

what is interesting is the lack of info on their employers (market patrons?) and those who actually exploit their cheap labor (and other activities) on these markets

judging by the wiki info, ghana is a post colonial (british) country, still connected to the commonwealth organization (read: still exploited by their former? colonizers, most likely with little locally owned resources/industry), similar to many african countries

Ghana, known for its gold in colonial times, remains one of the world's top gold producers. Other exports such as cocoa, timber, electricity, diamond, bauxite[27], and manganese are major sources of foreign exchange monitored, operated and managed by the Presidential Ministry Agricultural Arm of the Republic of Ghana headed by Mrs. Antoinette Efua-Addo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana