Hey, where have you been?  You've been missing in action for quite a while.
I hope all's well and welcome back.

Chi Jaama

Joe Sambou






>From: Malamin Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Two Jobs and a Sense of Hope
>Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 20:02:41 +0000
>
>Two Jobs and a Sense of Hope
>A Young Man From Mali Discovers a Tough Life on a Time Clock
>
>By Anne Hull
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Wednesday, December 11, 2002; Page A01
>Last of four articles
>Atlanta -- The toilet is stuffed with paper and flooded. Adama Camara
>retrieves the mush from the water. He's assigned to clean the men's
>restrooms on Concourse A of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.
>Swabbing the floor, he's always careful not to let the strings of the mop
>touch the wingtips and loafers around him. He puts in new paper towels. He
>wipes down the latrines and then mucks out the stalls.
>Adama does not complain. He will only say, "The people stink."
>He speaks four languages but works quietly. He's often mistaken for a black
>man in the Deep South's sense instead of a newly arrived immigrant from
>west
>Africa. One day he's scouring the men's bathroom across from Gate A-19 when
>a black American walks up. The stranger looks at him and asks, as if to
>shake Adama awake, "Man, why do you work in here? This is nasty."
>It took Adama a while to figure out what the man meant, why he was so
>bothered.
>Displayed under glass at the Atlanta airport is Martin Luther King Jr.'s
>preacher robe, his watch and his handwritten letters with words scratched
>out, the words begging for a new day to dawn.
>Here it is almost 40 years later and a young black man is scrubbing toilets
>in the gateway to the South.
>For Adama, an immigrant from the threadbare country of Mali, cleaning
>bathrooms for $6.23 an hour is better than marching off to the diamond
>mines
>of Sierra Leone.
>"You've never tasted collard greens?" This question has been asked of Adama
>many times, and the asker is always shocked, as if Adama has failed a test.
>When Adama came to Atlanta, part of the past decade's wave of immigration
>to
>the South, he was swept into a narrative he was unprepared for. He stepped
>off the Greyhound with just one suitcase but with two centuries of baggage.
>He didn't realize that his job emptying garbage cans was full of symbolism.
>It wouldn't occur to him to be angry. He has no antenna for racial slights.
>One afternoon, a black American co-worker of Adama is sitting in a
>motorized
>cart parked on the busy concourse. A white man comes rushing up and
>gestures
>to the car. "Where do these things get dispatched?"
>"Dispatched?" the worker says.
>The man's face falls. "I'll use another word," he says, condescendingly.
>Adama is unbothered by such exchanges. "No problem," he'll say, which can
>irritate his co-workers, who have suffered such exchanges for years.
>With a workforce of 44,800, Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport is the
>largest employment center in Georgia. Such a huge job bank is not lost on
>the flood of new immigrants. But after the terrorism of 9/11, the airport
>adopted tighter security measures, and anyone without the right documents
>couldn't get security badges. Many Latinos vanished. Africans are filling
>the void.
>Africans make up only 2 percent of the 4.1 million people in metro Atlanta,
>but their numbers are increasing. They come from Ethiopia and Nigeria,
>Somalia, Mali and Sierra Leone, all parts of the continent affected by war,
>famine or political upheaval. They are wresting the airport taxi business
>away from American cabbies, many of them black. They're working fast food
>and customer service. Some are hesitant to share details of their past. "I
>ran from a dictator," says an African wheelchair pusher. Most are young and
>just desperate for work.
>Adama's home of Mali in west Africa has been tormented by drought and
>dictatorship. Mali was once a kingdom on the gold route and later a French
>colony known as French Sudan. Democratic since 1991, Mali is an
>impoverished
>country of 10 million people.
>Adama is from the capital city of Bamako. But if asked he will say Nara,
>because the custom is to claim the village or city where your father was
>born. In Bamako, Adama lived in a cement house with his father, his
>father's
>two wives and their 13 children. No phone, sporadic electricity and not
>much
>of a future.
>In 1999, at age 19, with a high school education, Adama left Mali for New
>York. He had relatives in Brooklyn. He worked at a car wash during the
>winter, earning $3.75 an hour. He was called "nigger" for the first time,
>by
>a black customer who didn't like the way Adama buffed his car. In the
>spring, Adama took a bus to Atlanta. He had remembered it from watching the
>1996 Olympics, and it seemed like a place where his hands would thaw.
>Adama landed on Buford Highway, the heart of immigrant Atlanta, crashing at
>a cousin's apartment. On his second day, he saw a group of Mexican men
>standing on Buford Highway and joined them to wait for pick-up work. Next,
>he got a job at a car wash, where the boss made the immigrant workers clock
>off during slow spells and clock back on when business picked up. Finally,
>Adama heard that Africans were getting hired at the airport.
>Now the airport is his whole existence. He has two-full time jobs on
>Concourse A. He begins at 6:30 a.m. as a janitor for Initial Contract
>Services. From 3 to 11, he works at the Budweiser Brew House and Smoking
>Lounge, where he is a member of the utility crew.
>His 16-hour work days are numbingly boring and physically grueling. He
>sleeps four or five hours most nights and takes 300 milligrams of Motrin
>for
>his aches. In seven months of working two jobs, he has never called in
>sick.
>"On my day off, I have tea," he says, which means that when he has the
>morning off, he walks to Publix to buy a baguette and returns to his
>sparsely furnished apartment and boils water. He drinks his tea from a
>small
>glass tumbler, Arabic-style, with lots of sugar.
>He is 6 feet 3 with dark skin and a round scar on his right cheek. He walks
>in a forward-leaning way. He wears a leather choker threaded with an
>African
>shell. His English is lilting and accented by French. His smile is so wide
>it consumes his face. The young women who work at the airport volunteer
>their phone numbers, and he ducks his head shyly, without bravado, and they
>find this totally exotic.
>On Buford Highway, he shares an apartment with three other Malians. Adama's
>bedroom is military neat. He sleeps on the floor because that's what he did
>in Africa. A large digital clock is beside him. When the alarm goes off and
>he is nauseated with fatigue, he fixes one thought in his mind. "I think
>about the American dollar," he says. He splashes water on his face, says
>his
>morning prayers and then throws himself into the blades of another day on
>Concourse A.
>The Atlanta airport is the busiest in the world, with 220,000 fliers
>arriving, departing and connecting each day. Adama is right: The people
>stink. They ball up dirty diapers, leave blood in the sink and use
>Starbucks
>cups as spittoons.
>Ron Willis is a corporate vice president of Initial Contract Services, the
>cleaning company hired to oversee most of the 5.7 million square feet of
>the
>Atlanta airport terminal complex. To Willis, a strapping Southerner who
>loves University of Georgia football, cleaning is math, and math is profit.
>Twenty years ago, it took an hour to clean 2,500 square feet of commercial
>space. Now, 5,000 square feet can be cleaned in an hour. Riding vacuums and
>trash compactors have become more efficient, but the main reason is that
>people are working faster. They have to. Flights are departing earlier in
>the morning and landing later at night than ever, shortening the window of
>cleaning time for the overnight crew.
>"Think of America in the last 20 years," says Willis, his voice rising with
>passion. "We've improved in the world because of our productivity." At ICS,
>the janitorial crew has gone from what Willis calls "traditional" -- mostly
>single black women -- to 70 percent immigrant.
>"Adama's from Mali," Adama's black American supervisor says one morning to
>a
>higher-up boss, who is white.
>"It's a town called who?" the boss asks.
>Adama is assigned the two busiest men's bathrooms on Concourse A. This is
>Delta territory, with monstrous ebbing and flowing of crowds. It takes
>Adama
>15 minutes to clean a bathroom. He cleans each of his two bathrooms 12 or
>13
>times a shift.
>Clocking in at dawn, Adama walks through the airport, which still has its
>night calm. The wide concourse gleams from a fresh cleaning. Yawning
>passengers are just starting to arrive. Adama passes the Cinnabon, wafting
>sweet and floury, but he is oblivious, silent, beaten back by exhaustion
>from his late job.
>By mid-morning, he emerges from one of his bathrooms and the concourse is
>thick with travelers. Adama steers his cart carefully. His khakis are
>splattered with toilet water and sink water. He bumps into Lucille, a
>gray-haired Initial worker who's pushing her own yellow Rubbermaid bag on
>wheels. "Roll on my foot so I can go home," she says to him, and he smiles.
>A man walks up to a trash can between them, leans over and spits.
>Adama goes off to clean Gate A-19. He sweeps around the feet of a man
>eating
>a Twix bar. When it's time for his 15-minute break, Adama takes off his
>plastic gloves and walks down to the Initial office. It's behind one of the
>scuffed, unmarked doors that line the concourse. Inside are lockers, two
>vending machines, a desk, some chairs. Mostly it is a refuge from the
>public. Two janitors are talking about bottled water, a concept that still
>astounds.
>"I throw it away all day long," says a worker named Banita. "Water, water,
>my, they waste it."
>Another employee named Pamela reports how a man yelled at her earlier in
>the
>morning for tossing the remains of his food in the garbage. "One little
>crumb," Pamela says, shaking her head.
>They are the invisible, and it bothers them.
>"These people, they walk on the concourse; they don't see you; they don't
>move," Banita says. Adama silently eats his Chick-fil-A biscuit. He checks
>the time. One minute left on break. He crumples his wrappers and returns to
>the concourse. He likes his co-workers but feels no solidarity at living in
>history's shadow together. "We are different," he says, diplomatic enough
>to
>say this in private.
>Most of the Americans think the Africans are arrogant. "They want to be
>authoritative," says a janitor named Viola. "You are supposed to look up to
>them. They say, 'no problem,' but they still got this attitude. Now, that's
>a problem."
>Viola glances toward Adama, who is rolling his cart into a gate area.
>"Adama, though, he sweet."
>The plane to Boston has just left the gate. Newspapers are everywhere.
>Fried
>rice is scattered on the floor. A Seattle's Best Coffee has spilled and
>Adama bends over the mess. CNN drones overhead. "In terms of tech, the chip
>sector is a mixed bag today." Two fast-food workers on break discuss
>employment options. Wall Street Deli is holding a job fair.
>Quitting time is 2:25, but by 2:15, most of the Initial workers are in the
>office staring down the time clock, their purses wrapped around their
>wrists
>and their bags bundled for the fleeing. Adama is still out there cleaning.
>After he clocks out, he returns to the men's bathroom he has just cleaned.
>He goes into a stall with his backpack and strips out of his blue Initial
>T-shirt. He puts on a green polo with a logo from the Budweiser Brew House
>and Smoking Lounge. That job starts in 28 minutes.
>"Adama, number eight, Bud Lite!"
>The Budweiser Brew House and Smoking Lounge is an escalator ride up from
>Concourse A. Adama works on the utility staff, changing kegs, washing
>glasses and busing tables. Set among Anheuser-Busch and St. Louis Cardinals
>souvenirs, there's a lively bar, nachos, good music and an endless supply
>of
>ashtrays, all of which Adama wipes out a hundred times a shift. A strange
>atmosphere for a Muslim. But familiar.
>He takes a mop into the men's room. "There is pee on the floor," he says.
>"Sometimes when you drink, you don't know what you do."
>A blonde lights a Marlboro Gold as the bartender slides her a Cape Cod. A
>big man talks on a cell phone while wolfing two chili dogs. Some guys on
>stools order another round of Sam Adams.
>The majority of the bartenders and servers are black American. The majority
>of the utility staff is African. Adama's two closest friends work here,
>Yacouba Goita and Malick Diallo, both from Mali. Their sense of duty is out
>of proportion with their lowly tasks. They act like maitre d's, not
>busboys.
>They patrol the tables, speaking in Bambara, Mandingo or French, their
>white
>rags through their belt loops.
>A boss lays a hat on Adama's head that says "Budweiser King of Beers." The
>sound system blasts Grace Jones's "Pull Up to the Bumper" as rain pelts the
>tarmac outside. The back walls are all glass and jets circle like shark
>fins. Bad weather means flight delays. The bar is hopping. "Adama, white
>zinfandel," the bartender shouts and Adama turns for the stock room. He has
>tried to explain to his father what he does, but how do you explain this?
>By
>10 p.m., he has been working for nearly 15 hours. His back and arms throb
>from bending over a low sink to wash beer glasses. His clothes and skin
>smell like ashes.
>Last call at the Brew House. Adama mops out the place. Getting back to
>Buford Highway where he lives requires a train ride and then a bus ride
>that
>take an hour. It's nearly 1 a.m. when he lies down on his lion blanket on
>the floor, the alarm clock set for 5:05 a.m.
>"Dynasty" is the curse of Adama's life. With reruns of the TV show
>broadcast
>in Mali, Adama's family thinks he is living high in America. In reality, he
>earns $1,800 a month after taxes. He saves $800 and sends $300 back to
>Mali,
>where he's essentially supporting a family of 17.
>Lately, family members have been calling more frequently with their wish
>lists. He is a human hotline in the land of plenty. One morning he's
>cleaning the men's bathroom across from Gate A-19 when his cell phone
>rings.
>"Alo?" he says. It's his brother calling from Mali. Daddy says send more
>money.
>Africa occupies a unique psychic space in Atlanta, a city known as the
>black
>capital of the South and home to the nation's fastest-growing black middle
>class. At the airport, the underground walkway to Concourse A features a
>permanent exhibit of art from Zimbabwe. Adama rides the escalator past the
>photos of wild hippos and giraffes, untouched by the gesture to the
>motherland. "In Mali, the animals are in the zoo," he says.
>The cultural disconnect works both ways. Schree Potts-Ramsey is the
>operations manager of the Budweiser Brew House and Smoking Lounge. Two
>years
>ago, when she hired her first African employee, Potts-Ramsey, a black
>American, didn't know what to expect. "Have you ever seen 'Coming to
>America'?" she says, referring to the Eddie Murphy movie about a
>fez-wearing
>African prince who visits America. "Okay, I'm thinking that, and
>elephants."
>As Potts-Ramsey hired more Africans, it fell to her to give them a crash
>course on American customs. They may speak four languages and know obscure
>facts about the 53 countries in Africa, but someone had to tell them about
>deodorant.
>"No, sweetie, not once a week, once a day," Potts-Ramsey explained. And
>women? "Never dinner on a first date. Always lunch or brunch."
>What is brunch? they wanted to know.
>They are always setting out to explore America. Once they asked for
>directions to Indianapolis. They claimed they were going on their day off.
>"Yeah, right," Potts-Ramsey said. The next time they clocked in for work,
>they presented her with a coffee mug that said "Indianapolis."
>A few of the black American employees complain to Potts-Ramsey about hiring
>so many Africans, citing their weak English. History may have split them up
>centuries ago, but there is no natural cleaving back together here at the
>Brew House.
>Attempts are made. One afternoon, an American waitress named Yvonne says to
>a Nigerian employee, "Did you hear about that lady from Africa who they
>tried to bury up to her neck and then stone her?"
>"No, I didn't hear about that," the Nigerian says.
>"Well, Oprah's gonna help her," Yvonne says.
>Potts-Ramsey is a more revered figure than Oprah in some parts of Mali. Her
>photo hangs in several houses, sent home by the Brew House Africans. They
>are grateful that she gave them $8.75-an-hour jobs and coached them through
>life here. One Saturday, she was at home in the suburbs when the doorbell
>rang. There were Yacouba and Malick. "We are here to clean," Yacouba
>announced. They even took down the ceiling fans and cleaned the blades.
>The next day, the doorbell rang again. This time, Yacouba and Malick were
>dressed in African garb, brilliantly colored grande boubous and silk hats.
>"Where y'all goin', all like that?" Ramsey asked. They were accompanied by
>15 platters. "We have prepared dinner for you," Yacouba said.
>Adama has "the grip." Aching, fever, soreness everywhere. He is exhausted.
>His one-hour commute to the airport from Buford Highway adds an extra two
>hours to his double-shift workday. He decides he must leave the immigrant
>life of Buford Highway and move closer to the airport.
>He settles on a black neighborhood on the perimeter of the airport in the
>city of College Park. The move takes him deeper into the experience of
>being
>a black man in America. He's walking home from the bus stop one night when
>a
>white police officer stops him. Where are you going? Where are you coming
>from? Show me your I.D.
>Adama isn't scared or angered by the incident; he is more unnerved by the
>occasional sound of gunshots. His apartment complex has steel bars and
>dyed-red bark thrown on the ground instead of grass. Jets scream overhead.
>Adama lives with two other Malians who split the $650 monthly rent. Across
>the street, a Nigerian runs a convenience store called Quick and Cheap with
>bullet-proof glass and gouging prices: $1.29 for the can of peas Adama
>buys.
>Adama is so careful with money that he examines a pack of Wrigley's before
>buying it. But he wants to buy a car. With a car, he would be able to take
>a
>girl to dinner instead of meeting her at Plane Delicious at the airport
>food
>court.
>Raiding his savings account, he buys a 1994 Mazda. The car conks out while
>he's driving home from work. The problem is grave, he learns the next day,
>when a shade tree mechanic from the Ivory Coast comes over with Yacouba and
>Malick to diagnose the car. It's the engine. No one told Adama that a car
>engine requires oil.
>The mechanic advises that a used engine will cost $800. Adama goes upstairs
>to his roachy apartment. Condoleezza Rice is on TV. Adama turns off the
>sound and plays his music. He is homesick. He looks out the window and sees
>run-down apartments identical to his own. He puts his head in his hands.
>He calls Yacouba and says he's catching the train up to Buford Highway.
>Yacouba, who has recently discovered bowling, goes to the Asian market and
>buys a frozen lamb's head. Soup is on the way. Malick comes over. They all
>watch the news in French on satellite TV. They pop in bootleg dance videos
>from home, the bouncing sounds of Salif Keita competing with the accordions
>from the Mexican apartment next door. Ten miles from Turner Field, the tiny
>seeds of Mali.
>When it gets late, Yacouba makes a pallet for Adama on the floor and hands
>him an alarm clock.
>"He is lonely where he lives now," Yacouba says.
>In Mali, Adama knew one white person, a Mormon missionary. That's one more
>than he knows in Atlanta, after 14 months of living here.
>His neighborhood, with its gospel roller rink, neckbone specials, fish
>houses and tabernacle churches, begins to feel more familiar. He recently
>saw two skinny boys from Togo kicking a can down the sidewalk.
>"More Africans be staying over here now," Adama says, the schoolhouse
>English he learned in Mali giving way to the local blend.
>Adama begins dating an black American woman named Machika Lowe, who's 23
>and
>works at the Oscar Mayer Hot Dog Construction Company at the airport. "You
>want to go to a '70s party with me tonight?" Machika calls to ask on a
>Saturday night. Adama has no clue what she's talking about but somehow
>their
>relationship works. He takes her to Buford Highway and treats her to an
>African hair braiding.
>Ask Yacouba what his future holds and a look of total peacefulness crosses
>his round face. "We are going home," he says. Adama? He's not so sure.
>Maybe
>he will save enough money to open an African merchandise kiosk in
>Underground Atlanta. One thing is certain. He wants only one wife. In
>America, how could you ever afford two?
>Instead of the '70s party, he sleeps for 12 hours and arrives at the
>airport
>the next day at dawn. Sunday mornings on Concourse A have their own gentle
>rhythms. Master Shine the shoe shine man plays gospel music. Can we get
>some
>church in here? Shirley Caesar sings.
>A janitor who works with Adama rolls his cart of trash by and tips his
>chin.
>"Hey, doctor," he says. Adama knows every inch of this place, dirty or
>clean. He's taking classes at the airport to apply for a job as a
>$10-an-hour customer service assistant. But for now he bends over a garbage
>can slimed with Manchu Wok noodles. Just as he removes the bag to put in a
>new one, a man dumps a plate of food into the unlined can. Adama picks it
>out by hand.
>The world of garbage is unrelenting, but pride is still eked out wherever
>possible. One of Adama's colleagues comes to work with a set of French wrap
>nails and a beauty parlor 'do. In the Initial break room, a supervisor
>tries
>to advise another woman on what kind of car to buy. She's tired of the bus.
>He suggests an economical Kia. "I won't ride in a Kia," she says.
>By the time Adama clocks off, Concourse A is knotted with travelers and
>strollers and rolling luggage. It's Sunday and that means no second job at
>the Brew House. Adama disappears into the men's room and comes out wearing
>a
>T-shirt that says "Dirty Dirty," a reference to the rap genre known as the
>Dirty South. He walks through the terminal and then up the MARTA train
>platform, where he boards a car. Except for two Dutch tourists with
>backpacks, everyone has on a stained uniform. The 3 o'clock shift workers
>have punched out. Adama sits next to a contingent from Popeyes.
>After one stop he gets off at College Park and waits for the bus. A young
>man with a gold tooth gives him a nod. "I like your shirt, man," he says.
>"Thank you, man," Adama says, giving a smile that is unreturned.
>The day is wan and pale. Summer is gone but there is no fall, only a lack
>of
>color and heat. On the bus to Flat Shoals, Adama sits under a Church's
>Chicken ad. Three pieces and a biscuit for $1.99. Someone has scrawled on
>the seat in front of him, DA SOUTH.
>The bus passes pines and red clay, and rumbles over railroad tracks. The
>windows are open. A breeze blows across the silent passengers, anesthetized
>by fatigue. Adama closes his eyes and falls asleep.
>© 2002 The Washington Post Company
>
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
>http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
>Web interface
>at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
>To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
>[log in to unmask]
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~