The Age of Sustainability by Mark Swilling

Author:Mark Swilling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Evolutionary potential of the present: why ecocultures matter1

DOI: 10.4324/9780429057823-8

Preface

It is early on a mild November morning in 2004 and the Toi Market in Nairobi is starting up. There are around 2000 stalls, almost all engaged in the sale of foodstuffs to people from surrounding poor communities. Stalls are made of wooden poles and a mix of plastic and metal materials provides cover. There is no grid structure but rather a dense network connected by pathways wide enough for one person. The floors are raw, muddy and risky. No tourists to be seen in this market and Nairobi’s middle class does not shop here. The market has been going since 1991 and has enjoyed the usual highs and lows that poor people face when it comes to winning space to conduct ordinary life in highly contested and congested urban systems. Sixty per cent of the stallholders own their own stalls, the rest rent their stalls from owners of the stalls. Sellers buy their goods from the central market, or from local farmers, and some are farmers themselves selling directly to the public. This market was set up by poor people who need to make a living by selling the goods that poor communities need for daily survival. What holds this market together is a self-organizing savings and loan system that is controlled by the stallholders themselves. The key leader is your classic male community organizer: charismatic, shrewd, high energy, confident, supersensitive about his perceived integrity, mindful of the need for inclusiveness of his inner leadership group and as alert as a mamba to every inflection and signal from those surrounding him as he moves down the narrow aisles between the stalls or chairs the large member’s meetings. The savings group has 800 members, of which 596 had loans in November 2004. After 2 p.m. every day, the collectors (members who volunteer for the task on a rotating basis) visit those stallholders who are members to collect the daily savings. On a good day, they collect from 500 stallholders – most days the number of savers varies between 300 and 500. Each saver has his/her own book and the collector has a book – the transactions are carefully recorded in full view of everyone in both books. It’s a routine transaction, conducted with a certain conscious absent-mindedness interspersed with chatter about matters or problems of the day. The connection made, the relationship renewed, the fact that the system has survived another day has been registered – precious certainty when all else can change in an instant. On Thursdays all members are supposed to meet in a hall on the outskirts of the market that the savings group has built from their own funds. Usually, 250 pitch up. The leader sits in the middle of a table upfront, various people with roles on both sides of him. The rest are seated in church-style rows on wooden benches, some with their backs against the side walls which are adorned with names of members on flipchart paper, messages and posters.

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