Families, fridge-freezers and the future.

A couple of years ago I wrote a little piece on here called the dishwasher dialogues about Caring, domestic appliances and Problematic Family Dynamics. This piece is slightly wider globally but continues the theme of domestic appliances and relationships. In this bit of scribbling it’s not so much the relationships (or the appliances themselves) that are tricky, more the circumstances. Global inequalities and structural poverty have a massive impact on all our lives, whether we ‘know it’ or not….

I am a privileged white woman (ie ‘educated’, well fed as a child, having ‘citizens’ rights in law, literate, numerate, having ‘papers’ to prove who I am and freedom to travel, bank account etc etc..) living in the UK. So I have both reliable electricity and a fridge freezer. I can’t currently afford my electricity bill but I have access to a credit card so I’m still enjoying the benefits of it. Ditto the fridge-freezer, a new one, which I actually own (technically speaking jointly own). It was paid for (for ‘us’, hence joint ownership) by a friend, during lockdown and at the time my Guinean husband had just arrived in the UK in time for a pandemic. Lockdown led to the loss of all the work that had been arranged, (low income self employed musicians didn’t get furloughed and having earned about £40 the previous year I didn’t qualify for the % of your earnings Gov help thing…). So I was left me with a rented house I didn’t have much furniture for. The cooker came with the kitchen but neither a fridge freezer or awashing machine did. It’s easier to manage without a washing machine than a fridge here, you can use a laundrette or take laundry to your mates. Now, I have both. I don’t underestimate how very, very fortunate this makes me. A quick google says 1.4 billion such appliances are owned around the world and there are more than 8 billion of us. You can do the maths, or the googling (other search engines are available!) but it’s not that many! Also I don’t live in a massively hot country and I have access to plenty of water so I could manage, I just don’t want to have to!

It’s been a bit problematic having said appliance as ‘him indoors’ took a while to understand how to use it ‘properly’ and the icing up of the freezer bit (due to door not being properly shut) is still an area of domestic disharmony. So is ‘spoiled’ food being left in it and cleaning, but over the years I’ve become (resentfully) resigned to the fact that if I want a clean fridge then I am the person who has to make that happen. The ‘who cleans what’ aspect of domestic arrangements has almost never been satisfactory, from my point of view, in any household I’ve ever been part of, but that’s another story entirely. I am, however, grateful to have a fridge-freezer, and food to put in it, reliable electricity to run it so it doesn’t unexpectedly defrost at unpredictable intervals causing both mild flooding and massive ‘economic inconvenience’ (and sometimes food poisoning). I have both family members and friends in West Africa who do have to contend with these things, and this makes my gratitude bigger.

I have family-by-marriage in Guinea and family by choice/association in both the Gambia and Cassamance (Southern Senegal). This has caused a cluster of complications and some financial dependencies and a whole load of rage against structural poverty on the global scale. Also yet more gratitude that by the geographical accident of my birth I struggle on a different scale to them, particularly the women, more rage that I’m trapped in a different set of systems of ‘injustice’ (but not as ‘materially poor’), masses of learning on an individual and ‘sociological’ level and some writing. Some of the writing – The Tragikal Tales of a Sometimes Princess – does talk about poverty, but not specifically about fridgefreezers.

Last time I stayed with my Guinean ‘brother by choice/association’ and his family in The Gambia I bought them a fridge-freezer instead of giving them ‘thankyou for having me’ money. The idea behind this was that his wife could then augment the family income by making and selling cold water/drinks/ice cream and other goods, as well as meaning that food could be kept for longer. I was hoping her/their lives could be made a little easier. West African women, or at least all the ones I know, go to market every day because nothing can be kept for long in that heat. Ice has to be bought. Cold drinks , and ‘ice cream’. Local ice cream is a sort of ‘flavoured water’, bit like a sorbet, in a small plastic bag, that costs a very small amount of money and is delicious and useful when travelling as it brings your temperature down so you don’t overheat in the non aircon ‘hot box’(aka ‘van’ ‘gellegelle’ ‘car’ etc..) you’re currently squashed into with a varying number of other people (for a more detailed description of this look at – The Trakical Tales). Sort of like the ‘ice pop’ of my youth but home made. Generally bought from a woman with a ‘cool bucket’ full of them, who’s used a fridge-freezer to make said item earlier. My favourite is baobab, or ginger, but I’ll generally take anything going when I’m really hot.

Last time I stayed with my Guinean ‘brother by choice/association’ and his family in The Gambia I bought them a fridge-freezer instead of giving them ‘thankyou for having me’ money. The idea behind this was that his wife could then augment the family income by making and selling cold water/drinks/ice cream and other goods, as well as meaning that food could be kept for longer. I was hoping her/their lives could be made a little easier. West African women, or at least all the ones I know, go to market every day because nothing can be kept for long in that heat. Ice has to be bought. Cold drinks , and ‘ice cream’. Local ice cream is a sort of ‘flavoured water’, bit like a sorbet, in a small plastic bag, that costs a very small amount of money and is delicious and useful when travelling as it brings your temperature down so you don’t overheat in the non aircon ‘hot box’(aka ‘van’ ‘gellegelle’ ‘car’ etc..) you’re currently squashed into with a varying number of other people (for a more detailed description of this look at – The Trakical Tales). Sort of like the ‘ice pop’ of my youth but home made. Generally bought from a woman with a ‘cool bucket’ full of them, who’s used a fridge-freezer to make said item earlier. My favourite is baobab, or ginger, but I’ll generally take anything going when I’m really hot.

The buying of the fridge-freezer was a massive ‘adventure’ for us all and we needed some help. Firstly deciding what type. My bro favoured the idea of the chest freezer, he comes from fisherfolk so I think that’s probably what he’s familiar with. When you go to the fishmarkets they sometimes have these. His wife said the upright kind would be better and I agreed as this meant they could have a fridge as well. Various ‘Western consumer goods’, often of very poor standard, or badly broken, or so well used they hardly work in the original way, can be purchased in Gambia but none of us had any current contacts. This is important as a ‘receipt’ or a ‘guarantee’ is generally not something that easy to acquire and so knowing the person who’s selling the item, or knowing their brother, or some such ‘people chain’ of ‘reliability’ is helpful in case of problems with the purchase. Also buying something that actually works long term can be tricky because it’s going to be second-hand. The power is most definitely with the seller and you’re parting with a relatively large amount of cash. If one of the people doing the buying/questioning etc is white this further complicates matters and usually makes the item more expensive. But in this case he and I had to go and look together as he’s got no idea about fridgefreezers and how to buy a good one so I was resigned to ‘it’ll be a bit more expensive’ than it should be.

Luckily we had a new friend who drives a taxi (with a useful roofrack for carrying domestic appliances), is a ‘fixit’ man for another English friend of mine and knew a couple of places we could look. So we were one Gambia guy, one Guinean (sometimes problematic due to his tribal affiliation and racism/tribalism – unsure how to define it but definitely prejudice, bit similar to the way Romany people get treated here) and one white girl (actually now I’m a bit older it can be helpful in this sort of situation due to respect for older people being part of the culture). So the ‘buying party’ felt relatively ok because the people we were going to buy from would know at least one person knew about the appliance and at least one person would know them. In the end none of our new friend’s contacts had what we wanted (equal amounts of fridge and freezer and under £200) but they sent us to other people and we bought one that was definitely working because it was plugged in. It wasn’t too bad price-wise, (I’ve forgotten exactly how much, slightly over my budget I think but the exchange rate was good for me that time) although we didn’t manage to negotiate it down quite as far as I’d hoped. The man in the shop did clean it up a bit and we unplugged it and put it on the roof. Both my bro and I are very short but fortunately our taxi driving friend and the shopkeeper had enough reach to hoist it up and he had rope to tie it securely.

We returned triumphantly with our wonderful ‘surprise’ (his wife knew we’d talked about buying one but didn’t know it was going to be that day) and everyone was out! I was soooo disappointed, having been looking forward to her pleasure and surprise! Soon however she came home from market and there was joy and celebration and we all set to work cleaning it properly and rearranging the house so there was somewhere to put it (I had brought a decent extension lead with power surge control from the UK because I know about the terrible cheap electricals over there, generally Chinese/Taiwanese imports and the cause of many a fire, but that’s a whole ‘nother article and this is the celebratory bit so I don’t want to get cross!) It was cleaned and we put gaffa tape (also brought by me, again better quality than ‘local’) on the couple of places where the seal wasn’t quite ‘sealed’. I explained it had to stay upright for 12 hours before it was turned on because of the ‘gas settling’ (I don’t really understand the physics of this but I do know you have to do it if you want it to work). The children came home and were excited about it, people from neighbouring rooms came to see it.

My friend’s wife was ‘a lady with a fridge’ and so was excited and potentially better off. She started planning immediately about what she could make and we’d saved loads of bottles (useful and not always that easy to get hold of as bottled water not part of the average budget – and the tap water is safe to drink and this household has a tap) so cold water to drink was going to be an everyday occurrence and ice could be made to sell and we talked about where we could go and buy plastic bags and how much a ‘cool bucket’ would be and it was a very happy and exciting day. I was really pleased with my idea and delighted I could help my friends to help themselves.

The next day we turned it on. We filled it with bottles of water and we excitedly put food in it. I had to explain about waiting for food to be cold because none of my people had been in a houseold with a fridge before. We talked about how to prevent small children randomly opening and closing it & breaking the door (not much that can be done when you’re not looking but showing them the way to open it helps). We (well me, but it was all ‘we’ at that point) bought a huge watermelon and put it in the fridge. A friend with a garden gave us masses of tomatoes so we joyfully put them in it too, and then kept giving people tomatoes that hadn’t gone off – a delight and a wonder… The whole of the last week of my visit was filled with fridge related joyfulness. People came to look at it. We planned things to make and sell. We happily put things in and took them out and drank cold water and ate cold fruit and boiled eggs and potato salad and all sorts…. Before I went I also managed to give money to buy two ‘cold buckets’ so she could make and sell her wares and we discussed the best places to stand. She used to sell fish and she’s got a ‘market garden’ I forgot to give her money for plastic bags but she managed that

Since I’ve been back I’ve continued to have fridge related happiness. Pictures of the new ‘cool buckets, pictures of the inside of the fridge filled with things made to sell and so the joyfulness had continued. Electricity is mostly reliable in the Gambia these days. It didn’t used to be, the Gambian Utilities Corporation (GMC) used to be nicknamed ‘Give Us a Candle’ and ‘power’ used to be ‘on’ for about four hours in various areas in a sort of ‘informal turns system’ because capacity was limited. I’ve heard various reasons for why it’s better, infrastructure has got better in the 20 years I’ve been back and forth, although cost of living hasn’t improved much and is possibly slightly worse. This means the fridge-freezer has been in constant use. I’ve never been so happy to have pictures of the inside of someone’s fridge and I’ve shared a few on social media.

So now the ‘landlord’, who lives in the compound and who is a fair and just man who I very much respect, would like this particular ‘unit’ (there are about 8 altogether in the compound – ‘linehouses’ think ‘terraced houses’ but on a smaller scale mostly 2 or 3 rooms and all one story, some belong to his family and some rented) to have it’s own separate electricity meter. This is, of couse, going to be complicated and a bit expensive so will be stage 2. As far as I understand the total cost is going to be D8600 – which includes the GMC coming out and installing a second meter from the cable in the street, plus the ‘papers’ – always extra for ‘papers’ and these usually have to be photocopied and often finding a working photocopier is problematic! At the current exchange rate that’s about £150. I’m wondering if anyone can help with this? How I can raise the money when I can't actually pay my own bills and am running out of overdraft!! I don’t want to do another Justgiving page because I’ve already got one under construction for the other fridge-freezer related problem.

This separate one is Guinea family related. Here the poverty is worse and electricity more unreliable. The whole country is less stable and so the off again on again situation isn’t an ideal situation for a fridge freezer. Fresh from my Gambian triumph I rather foolishly sent money for some of my Guinean relatives to buy a fridge freezer. There has been somewhat less joy in this gift. Soon after that something complicated happened with the military government and the electricity became even more unreliable. Thus I now need to find enough funds for a generator to power said domestic appliance, if it hasn’t been sold in the meantime! Hence the Justgiving page currently under construction. Due to aforementioned poverty and less stable ‘utilities’ and no-one in the immediate family having a smartphone, there are fewer pictures from this part of my life. Long distance phone calls are expensive and even the phone isn’t reliable. So I’m currently unsure what the actual situation is – both with Guinea in general, our family in particular, and the fate of this specific fridge-freezer.