The jobs Nigerians do overseas(1) By Patrick Dele Cole-Guardian Newspapers, January 18, 2016

LIKE most young Nigerians, I had a picture of being young and strong while white people were white and weak. I am sure that young white people also thought black people to be weak. No one had ever tested this but we believed this so strongly that we thought nothing of the holiday jobs we all did as students. Ben and I worked in the freezing works where sheep was slaughtered, cleaned up and dressed ready for export. After cleaning, the wool and the innards, the hoofs, heads etc were stored separately – the bones were used to make buttons. Nothing was wasted – every part of the sheep had its uses. I worked in the paint house and Ben on the wool. This freezing works was a very large factory, slaughtering over 20,000-25,000 lambs per day. As each lamb is slaughtered, the feet are hung on a moving convoy. At regular intervals, there are other workers who remove the pelts and other parts not meant for export. The pelts are thrown into a giant washing machine which spits pelts on a conveyor belt. These pelts still have wool on them. We spread the skin of the sheep on the conveyor belt to enable it pass a machine that coats the leather with a chemical which loosens the wool from the skin (leather). My job was to see that each pelt is well painted with the chemical – so I had to spread the pelts evenly for the process of chemical painting. Thereafter, the pelts in a matter of minutes get to the wool floor where another set of workers spread the pelts on a waste high casel device. And in one go, by pushing their hands down the spread pelts remove the wool from the pelts which then are removed to another section of the plant for drying and tanning. Ben’s job was to make sure that all the wool thus removed was swept on to another conveyor that would now dry the wool. It is one of the softest jobs in the whole factory – sweeping wool to a conveyor belt. There are many who do Ben’s work but it does not take long before there is a pile up of wool which should have been moved. The whole factory is automated and if any part of the process is not up to scratch an alarm rings and every one would shout “uncle Ben again, please buck up” someone would run to this section and help clear the bleakly. As for me I wear thick gloves and spread the pelts evenly so the chemical sprays only the skin of the lamb. After every two or three hours there is a break for five minutes for those who smoke to do so and others to go to the toilet. Myself and Ben having the easiest jobs were invariably the culprits when the alarm went off and the conveyor stopped. The fore man should be heard screaming “Ben, Patrick get a move on: you are slowing the job.” We never understood why the other New Zealand boys could do much harder work for much longer hours but we were the culprits of tardiness every time. Our bodies will ache and we would have pains in our bodies where we never thought we had muscles!! Many Nigerians had summer jobs because then students were expected to work in summer and earn a bit of a living. Immediately after the exams in the UK is the fruit picking time. Many of us would arrive at the farm and we would see rows and rows of strawberries ready to be picked. White boys and girls, black boys and girls. Each person is given a bag, quickly shown how to pick a strawberry which you then put in the bag or basket given to you. At first we Nigerians thought this was easy work, some of us were from the farms, and others did farming in school. At 7a.m., we all start off: you would see small white girls and boys go at the strawberries like rabbit – picking and begin to fill their baskets. We Nigerians, Tom and Eddie, would try to keep up. Before they got to ½ of the allotted rows the white boys had finished and were returning their baskets, to take another basket and attack another row of strawberries. By 10a.m. the white boys and girls would have a 10 minutes break to drink tea. Tom, Eddie and other Nigerians would look at themselves, their back and waists shut to pieces, but have not picked up one basket. We collapsed; go back to the beginning to tell the foreman we cannot do it. But since we were paid according to the number of full basket strawberries none of us got paid. The foreman at one farm had asked us whether we really wanted to work at picking strawberries because in his experience he had never seen a Nigerian complete one day of picking with a full basket. Ben and myself after the freezing works, decide to do three hours work every other night at a biscuit factory not far from where we lived. The factory was almost fully automated – the flour came in, was mixed, cut, sugared, baked and packetted – all on a conveyor belt system. My job was to look at the machine that certified that the biscuit had been properly packetted and sealed. I had to press a botton to certify inspection for the conveyor to move. This is a mind numbing job, you may doze while standing or your concentration may waver or you may not press the botton hard enough, any of these infractions would cause an alarm and the red light on my spot would flash. “Patrick asleep again”, “No, I replied, I was lighting my pipe”. Ok, all systems go. ‘’Ben was at the very end of the factory – all the biscuits had been packetted, labelled, put in cartons. His job was to move the cartons on a wheel barrow from the end of the factory to the waiting truck about six feet away. Needless to say in the three hours we worked, there were at least six stoppages due to the fault of either myself or Ben. THERE were other jobs Nigerians did – Traffic Wardens, shop assistance – (all demanding standing for no less than eight hours), car washers, taking care of the elderly in old people’s homes, the post offices and mortuary assistants, underground ticket collectors, sweepers, etc. I am not going to tell you what our women and girls went through while working in the old people’s home. It is better imagined than described. I would end by telling you some of our experiences working in the post offices and in mortuaries. Mount Pleasant was the biggest post office and distribution centre in London. I stayed with a friend in Brixton who had a car and was the neatest, smartest man I know. He said he was reading law. Every morning he wears an impeccable suit, gleaming shirt with a tie knot so perfectly only he could do it. Every morning he said he had 8a.m. lectures and because of the traffic he would leave early to secure a parking place for his car. Another friend once came to the house and asked me to accompany him to Mount Pleasant because he was seeking a job. We went. The place was a beehive of Nigerians. All the Nigerians I had not seen for years were really all in Mount Pleasant. When my friend got his job, on my way out I saw my host – so I shouted “Jimmy, what are you doing here?” He said he had a project on Labour law and how it discriminated against black people and was in Mount Pleasant on field research!!! My own experience with the post office was at Christmas when the post office employed lots of students to shift letters. At first I was given an area or a beat to deliver letters to. No one told me about the technique of the easier way to do your beat. I trudged along and by 1p.m. I had not finished the first delivery. All the old women on my route made it a point of telling me I was late, “where is Mr. James, he is never late”! When I got back to the office, I refused to carry a second load. I was bushed. The supervisor then changed my job. I was now one of those who stood before the stamping machine. My job was to arrange the letters in a certain way – the stamp on the envelop was to be turned down so that the stamping machine would stamp the queens head to indicate the stamp had been used. It looked easy. Just turn the envelop so that the stamp is at the bottom right hand corner. Hundreds of thousands of these envelopes were on my left, I had to arrange them for the stamping machine. The job is mind numbing but your hands were fast otherwise the letter would pass without being stamped. On the third day it snowed. I opened my door and there was about five to six inches of snow outside. I went back inside and never saw the post office again. Working in the Mortuary of a large city hospital is probably the worst experience. You arrive at work just before midnight. You have to wear thick plastic aprons, wellington boots and large thick gloves. You were usually alone. The Corpse comes in to be hosed down, and put in body bags already tagged. Most bodies look actually dead and the expression on the faces confirms this. You sing all the songs you know in your mind to put off the crudest job imaginable. In some mortuaries the bagging is carefully automated so that there is no confusion whose body you are dealing with. Some bodies, however, do not look dead. Some have a silly smile on their faces; some have one hand raised, some have a quimzical look, which seem to say to you, are you alone? You want to join me? This of course is the fetid imagination of a tired mind. The last time I was there, a dead body had a smile and an armed rose up. I never returned to collect my pay. Tom once had a job on repairs of roads. He was given a hand held mechanical digger and concrete breaker. He lasted half a day and sometimes still shakes till now. So when I see thousands at the Embassy going to the United States or United Kingdom or Europe, I have a little laugh to myself; “Dis people dem no know nothing. Dem go suffer.” So when I see thousands at the Embassy going to the United States or United Kingdom or Europe, I have a little laugh to myself; “Dis people dem no know nothing. Dem go suffer.” • Ambassador (Dr.) Patrick Dele Cole, OFR