As the narrow earth streets of Karantina in south Jeddah take on solid form in the crepuscular dawn and the nocturnal feline scavengers relinquish their territory, then Fatima begins her day. She rouses her eldest daughter and together they prepare a simple breakfast. Seven mouths to feed, but the task is as simple as the food. Tamiz and foul and, on a good day, the undamaged pieces of an apple collected on her travels.
None of the children go to school; even if there was one locally, Fatima could not afford to send them. They receive a practical education on the streets; social relations, thinking on their feet, hassling for business and the intricacies of profit on the macro scale where every halala counts. Some work at road junctions, peddling a few trinkets, usually without much success. The teenage eldest daughter dispenses reassurance and binds wounds with maturity far beyond her years.
Domestic duty done, Fatima slings a cloth bag over her shoulder and leaves for the bus stand, pulling a battered push chair behind her. A half-hour journey sees her in Al-Faysaliah district, her chosen territory for the day’s scavenge.
Fatima lives by gathering cardboard, plastic water bottles and aluminum soft drink cans wherever she can find them. Rubbish skips and the sides of roads offer rich pickings. Shopping malls yield occasional bonuses of cardboard and damaged fruit and vegetables.
Assiduously checking every garbage skip and pile of rubbish that looks likely to yield a few cans, Fatima walks tens of kilometers a day, summer and winter. When she has loaded her protesting push chair to the limit, she waves down a prowling minitruck that will take her and the load back to Karantina.
“I don’t want to beg or accept charity,” she said firmly. Although a social marginal, she is fiercely defensive of her ability to provide for her family and holds herself proudly independent. “I get SR4 for three kilos for cans that I sell to the merchants. Cardboard brings money too.” The cans, plastic and cardboard are recycled commercially and put to good use.
She and her friends have limited choices. Beg, housemaid or scavenge. “Housemaids work from very early till very late with no break,” she said. “I could not care for my children if I did that.” Thousands of maids run away from their employers yearly, attesting to conditions that are less than perfect.
So, she lives on the margins of society, regarded as a pestilence by some and as a target by others. Most see her and her children as a nuisance that the country should be rid of. Few see her as she is, mother and sometime wife with six children to support. With no husband, no official help, no medical services or documentation this is no easy task. Survival, one day at a time is the limit of her plans. Yet she dreams.
This is not random garbage gathering. Fatima and her friends work systematically and for very long hours. The subculture of buyers, child carers and transport works efficiently and produce steady but small incomes for those operating in it. The scavengers provide a recycling service that most companies do not and are no burden to the state. Many, like Fatima, want to leave the Kingdom but cannot.
“In Chad, my family has a farm,” she told us. “I will go back there one day, Inshallah.” It will be a lifetime before she has the kind of money to travel with her children; the homeward journey may always be just a dream.
She arrived in the Kingdom on an Umrah visa 18 years ago from a poverty-stricken country. Initially attracted by the stories of oil wealth and jobs aplenty, she stayed on only to find that these were dreams too. She married here and over the years produced six children she now cares for. “Now I raise my children because their father escaped, married another wife and went back to Africa,” she said. Escaped; it’s an significant term to use in the context of the glittering prizes that attracted her to Saudi Arabia.
Jameela from Niger, one of Fatima’s neighbors, sometimes travels with her on her forays. “I used to work on my own, but groups of local children kept molesting us,” she said. “They abused us and physically forced us to leave. After that incident, I decided that I must travel with a companion to avoid trouble. Those children make it difficult to collect enough material to make a living. Sometimes it takes two or three trips to get what I used to in one day.”
The image often promoted by the media does not help either her self-esteem or work. “Why are these foreigners allowed to give a distorted image of Saudi society particularly in the holy cities?” asks one writer. “Innocent babies who should have been coddled by their parents or playing with children the same age sent as beggars to deadly crossings on thoroughfares...” pontificates another. Self-satisfied and doubtless well-fed writers have clearly lost the ability to stand in someone else’s sandals. Fatima would surely love the opportunity to coddle her children; they would doubtless appreciate it too. However, given the choice between coddling and eating, Fatima and her friends respond entirely practically.
Allegations of organized teams of beggars and an “African Mafia” are the stuff of urban myth. As a myth, it may have an element of truth. However, “not all fingers are the same length.” Social critics should remember the rule, “in general, don’t generalize.”
In the final analysis, people like Fatima are human, mothers and daughters. They have hopes, aspirations and faith, admirable qualities all worthy of respect. She is out making a living, taking responsibility for her life and keeping her family alive. What she is not doing is writing smug treatises on the “African Problem.”
Above all, she wants to go home. “I love my country indeed. If I get the means of travel, I would go back home. Now, Chad is better than when I left 18 years ago. I pray to Allah to give me another alternative instead of collecting scraps and garbage.”
Until then, she takes the practical view that she will do whatever is necessary to keep herself and her family alive.