When the flapping of butterfly wings turns maids into revolutionaries – Part 2

Last week we argued that part of the reason for not having angry mobs of jobless young people marching in the streets of Kampala is because many of them have been shipped off to provide labour abroad, especially in the Middle East.

Every day, as the sun rises and sets, groups of colour-coded young women (and occasionally men) shuffle through Entebbe International Airport – part of the 120,000 Ugandans exported to that region in 2022 alone. 

READ: 84,966 Ugandans left for Middle East in search of jobs in 2022 

This export, whatever moral views one has of it, has been an important pressure valve for an economy that creates less than half of the 500,000 jobs required every year.

The conditions are often less-than-ideal and there are well-documented cases of human trafficking, torture, exploitation and even sexual abuse. Yet, for many young Ugandans, this labour export market has provided an escape from the indignity of poverty and an exit ramp off the boulevard of broken dreams. 

Behind the statistics lie real people with real stories. Take Jenny (not her real name), who reached out to me 18 months ago when I last wrote about this subject. As a young girl, Jenny dreamed of becoming a surgeon. However, she did not get the grades in school and started slipping through the cracks.  

Armed only with an O-level certificate and a head full of dreams, she found her way to the Middle East, leaving behind two siblings of almost similar age and social circumstances. Handed lemons, Jenny put her head down and learnt how to make lemonade. 

“The reason I have worked here for so long isn’t just because I can do house chores well but I realised early on that you have to do something different so that you make it difficult to find someone to replace you,” she told me. “I decided to teach English to the young boys at home every evening and soon their older siblings started bringing assignments for me to help them with.”

By saving assiduously, Jenny bought a piece of land back home and built rental units. Another plot of land was earmarked for her own home. When we last spoke, Jenny was planning to return to Uganda to oversee her rentals and try her hand at business. With nothing but time on their hands, her two siblings had swung back and forth and both gone the family way, but without any forward economic movement.

Jenny’s story is shared by hundreds of thousands of young Ugandans in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is a sneak peek into the social-economic transformation that has happened before our own eyes over the past two decades.

Easier access to smartphones, social media and the internet has brought the world into the hands of a generation of young Ugandans and opened their minds to the vastness of the universe and its possibilities. 

A lot of it, admittedly, is a hop, step and jump through the sewers of the internet. But even these eventually emerge from the manholes to see other societies where streets are paved, swept and lit, and where the garbage is collected. They can juxtapose local officials driving 4x4s on the wrong side of the road, or flying first class to meet their counterparts from richer countries who fly coach or ride bicycles to work.

Some, like Jenny, can see, first-hand, how intentional and competent leadership can deliver social services, business-friendly ecosystems that catalyse innovation, and rule of law that undergirds private investment and reduces transaction costs. 

We revisited this topic following news that Saudi Arabia, the largest and most lucrative market, had sliced the maximum pay for this kind of imported labour. Other countries will, in due course, follow suit or turn to cheaper countries. Home automation will reduce demand further. Some, like Jenny, will just get bored or too old to bend to mop floors and return home.

When a critical mass of young Ugandans with a bit of exposure and some money in their pockets return home, things will become political. They will want to know why they can’t drink the tap water, why there are no ambulances, and why it is Just. So Damn. Difficult. to run small businesses profitably. 

You can already see this somewhat defiant attitude and growing expectations on social media and it will only get louder and more persistent as more return, or as the pressure builds locally with many unable to get out. 

If this all sounds familiar, it is because we have been here before. One unintended consequence of sending natives from the colonies to fight alongside the colonisers in the two World Wars was that it opened their eyes to the injustice of subjugation and the possibilities of self-determination. 

Opening the valve and exporting unemployed youths helps reduce the pressure in the short term, but is it physically impossible and politically implausible for them to return and be contained in the same pressure cooker.

It will take a few years still, but one day in the future we will look back and see that the seeds of revolution germinated in the carry-on luggage and overweight expectations of returning maids. 

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and  poor man’s freedom fighter. 
[email protected]; 
@Kalinaki