|
The other day I took a drive to Mercato to the Red
Pepper Stall (berbere terra) close to the
Tekle Haimanot Square to check the price of a kilo
of red pepper with what one radio station reported.
I know reporters would not be peddling false
information on such matters. Red pepper may be red
gold for exporters. The shortage of it though, is
becoming a red terror for many.
I remember in the late 1970's during the hayday of
the communist regime, traders engaged in the
business of hoarding red pepper to create artificial
scarcity for the speculative market were made to pay
the price of their offence with their dear lives.
Red pepper was selling dirt cheap then compared to
the present price which is 55 Br per kilo. I opt to
leave the arithmetical reckoning pf percentage
increases to the pundits in the field. Fifty kilos
of aid wheat, costing 90 Br, is not worth two kilos
of red pepper these days. I talked to a woman who
was standing calm and unexcited. She was staring at
nothing in particular. She was almost in tears not
knowing what to do with the little money she had and
had planned to prepare for a wedding party she has
to hold soon. She was now contemplating, not over
the thought of throwing the party, but over the
foreboding thought of surviving herself. She had a
reason to weep.
An opposition party is pushing for a salary
increment for civil servants, apparently oblivious
of what the stores will conclude. The grassroots
level community is served best if prices are
curtailed down to size. If tariffs of communication
increase, we can cut down usage. If transport fares
increase, we can walk, starting early in the
morning. If the price of food increases, including
red or green pepper, our option may be to go to
Heaven.
The escalating cost of red pepper is not only
becoming a living cost burden but also a topic of
conversation. Dining out is becoming the order of
the day or the order of the night among family
members who go out for dinner. That too is very
expensive. Eating a meal a day is becoming a
windfall. It is a pity that our caretakers do not
seem to have first-hand information on what it is
like to live on an inadequate pensioner's allowance
that hardly covers a decent meal or two in a decent
eatery. If they have not, there can be only one good
reason that could distance them from the facts on
the ground - the Millennium.
When traders of one item catch cold, all other
businessmen sneeze, although it is the consumers
that suffer from ensuing pneumonia. Red pepper is
not the only item that is taking us to the Zimbabwe
corridor of hyperinflation. The price of grain and
edible oil in particular is simply esoteric, best
known to those of us who have been to the market. I
would not talk about beer or meat, butter, sheep or
goats or even chicken not because these are dear in
the market but because they are not prescribed by
medics. We can window shop the lean and fatty meat
and stay healthy revising nostalgic stories of those
good old days when tej was real tej
and meat was real meat. Gone are the days….
We had better appeal to our caretakers to
investigate why the price of red pepper is
skyrocketing and pass orders to pertinent incumbents
to curb the problem even if it means freezing export
of red pepper as some speculators would make us
believe it is the cause. Needless to say, red pepper
is one of the vital ingredients in our cuisine. We
Ethiopians can hardly live without hot pepper, which
is also taken for its medicinal value like amoeba,
indigestion, dysentery or any other vector-borne
disease, according to traditions. Ask the Freight
Transport Department of Ethiopian Airlines or the
parcel courier service of the General Post Office
and they will tell how much ground red pepper we
send to Ethiopians in the Diaspora; a colossal
amount.
Some eateries have cancelled some dishes that are
prepared with ample red pepper. My friend Ashenafi
and I in passing recently succumbed to the whiff of
roasting fish at Seble fish house at Arat Kilo and
ventured in to crunch and munch Koroso. When
we asked for red pepper sauce or awaze as we have it
in the local vernacular, the reply given was that
they had run out of it. The crux of the matter was
that they would rather refrain from buying or making
ketchup chilly and save money than serve us the
sauce and narrow their profit margin.
Incidentally, what do you make of the trade of
buying a kilo of fish for 12 Br and selling it for
25 Br apiece?
There were times when certain bogus traders were
mixing foreign material like clay soil with red
pepper and selling it at cheap prices but at the
expense of the lives of consumers.
Economists are telling us, and of course the rest of
the world, that we are economically growing at the
rate of double digit percentages. Our optimism lies
in the vast employment opportunities created in the
horticulture field and the construction industry.
Capacity air freights of fruits and flowers are
exported at an unprecedented amount. Scores of high
flight buildings and new roads create employment
opportunities for thousands of job-seekers.
Officials of this or that department talk about
their achievements manifesting growth in charts and
figures. These are exhilarating data that only stand
true to the well-to-do.
The media-driven price index broadcast in the
morning hardly sees the sun set. The next day brings
with it new price tags with some increments on the
main. Growth percentages however, fail us at the end
of the day when we realise that the morning prices
never hold the same.
Is there an air-to-air business on the ground or a
looming corruption in the export market where demand
dictates where and when supply of red or green
pepper should go within or without boundary? |
