Salum was no longer going for long walks. He would wait for a call then rent the cart to go collect the items.
because the wires are not copper plated, that’s why they don’t last. As one can see, this was not just the size of the item but reflected a more complex valuation system that requires in-depth knowledge about where, when, and for what market a device is produced. This realm of knowledge includes knowing about corporate or multinational industrial design and product manufacturing choices made in mass production.
White, another collector, had recently shifted from crafting charcoal stoves to collecting. He had had a bad month when I visited the workshop for the second time in September 2021. He was approached by a man selling his old Toyota Corolla that had deteriorated beyond repair. The man wanted 800,000 TZS (347 USD) for the car. After quick negotiations, they settled on a price of 600,000 TZS (260 USD). However, White had never bought a scrap car before, and he could not know the car’s weight because he could not weigh it.
A simple technique that collectors use, once they know or guess the types of metal embedded in an object, is to lift it up. The purpose of lifting is to estimate the object’s weight, which provides insight into how heavy the metals are. This technique become useless with big scrap items like the car that White was offered. Therefore, the collector must gamble on the lowest price possible when there is no precise value estimation.
I discussed the deal with Rama, and he bet that White would end up with a loss. He told me that right then, before the deal was concluded. A Toyota Corolla should weigh less than half a tonne of iron, and with the engine, the tires, and copper from the wiring, Rama predicted that White might get around 500,000 TZS (217USD).
And that is what happened. White got 500,000 TZS (217USD) for a loss of 100,000 TZS (43USD) At the time, the price for iron was 800 TZS per kg. Five hundred kilograms would be worth 400,000 TZS (173USD) on the iron alone, plus other materials and the car engine. But White had miscalculated, and the engine was not sold. Until I left the field, White was still waiting for a repairer who was supposed to buy the engine. White had not yet developed the skills and knowledge that Salum and others hold about which devices, types, or brands are profitable and how to handle price negotiations. White had not been collecting long enough to navigate the car negotiation; these skills require a long apprenticeship. To know the collecting business, one has to master complex knowledge, and this knowledge is learnt through trial and error (Lave, 1977). White will consider this next time he buys cars.
When a new member joins (usually a man, as there have been no women working as scrap collectors at the workshop), he has to go collecting with an experienced member. The rookie will observe every step from where to go to which devices are most profitable, and will learn to keep up to date with price fluctuations from dealers that guide price negotiations with
Figure 21 Rama negotiating price with a seller
sellers. All this knowledge has to be tailored to the apprentice, hoping that he will master it after a couple of trips. When dealers are satisfied with the performance of an apprentice, then he can borrow the start-up amount and go out on his own.
Conclusion
Price negotiations depend on the value of objects and on the seller’s knowledge of that value. Price is determined by the knowledge and economic muscle of the seller. Devices that I collected with my walimu during my fieldwork varied from one area to another and across individual sellers. For example, at the Msasani peninsula, Regent Estate, Mbezi Beach, and Mikocheni areas, the collected devices were in good condition and we got them for cheap or sometimes for free. In low-income neighbourhoods, like some in the southwestern part of the city, however, the devices tended to be older and damaged, with visible marks from multiple repairs. Sometimes, parts had been already plucked by repairers, and price negotiations tended to be longer. Valorising fluctuates across class. The rich don’t ask for much money for sometimes-better products, because they don’t need it. Factoring in class and urban stratification is also part of the collecting job.
Therefore, sales and negotiations are influenced by many factors, including the device itself, the neighbourhood, pre-existing relations, language (especially the use of specific jargon), who is in the household at the time of the sale, and the selling family’s income. In a middle-class neighbourhood, negotiations over price are usually brief, and people sometimes prefer to give things away for free as otherwise they would have to pay a company to come collect them. In many cases, it was the opposite in low-income areas. Knowledge of which devices, types, or brands are profitable and how to handle price negotiations is crucial in gathering e-waste.
Rama was also approached by a car mechanic selling a defunct Ford Ranger truck. He wanted 400,000 TZS (173USD) for it. Rama proposed 200,000 TZS (87USD) for the car as his initial price, telling the man that cars would not give him anything for their price. One of his explanations was that the truck didn’t have its gearbox, making it of less value to scrap dealers. However, he had spotted that it did have its complete electric wiring, which he estimated weighed around 10 kg.
The car’s chassis was still intact, and the springs were there. Sharply, he estimated that the car would weigh around 800 kg, making its body worth around 640,000 TZS (277USD), and with other metals he reached a total estimate of around 800,000 TZS (347USD). He then had to calculate costs for the labour of dismantling the car, transport from the garage to the workshop, and renting a circular saw for cutting; these costs were near 100,000 TZS (43USD).
All of these calculations were made on the spot while negotiating price. In the end, they settled for 350,000 TZS (152USD), which made Rama a profit of 350,000 TZS (152USD), equal to a month’s salary for a new primary school teacher.
Gathering scrap is an art that involves skill and expertise in knowing and extracting value, knowing the history and provenance of discarded goods, and knowing the way the city is arranged by neighbourhoods and income, providing a roadmap of where and when to go. In negotiating with device owners, a waste collector has to project the value depending on the type and size of the device and what he is going to earn from it. On top of that, he has to lower the seller’s expectations to agree with his price. At this point, the waste collector has to know the types of metals he can find and what price he will sell them at. These are detailed forms of knowledge to acquire.
Chapter 5. Gathering: Coming Together
Mahakama Ya Friji is a workplace where labour is exerted; ‘e-waste is reshaped, one life ends, and a new life starts’, as George once said. Mahakama Ya Friji is a transient place;
materials are ingeniously revalued, repurposed, and reshaped. At the workshop, defunct things acquire new value and functions. This part of the thesis stays with Mahakama Ya Friji workshop to explore how waste transforms into value. It focuses on the valorisation of waste, the value of extracted materials, the politics of value, and how extracted value enhances sociocultural and economic fabrics beyond the workshop.
In this chapter, I attend to a waste workshop in a postcolonial city as a workplace.
Mahakama Ya Friji workshop is not a cast-off place; it is not a ‘Gomorrah’, as informal waste recycling places in African cities are portrayed by the international media (Adjei, 2014). These places are not mere recipients of technology, sites of backwardness in technocapitalism, or spaces out of place or wastelands. The usual narrative is that these places are separated from their cities, found on empty grounds and apocalyptic sites.
The workshop is also not, or not only, a place of toxic violence. One could view the workshop as a ‘disposable’ place, a place for disposable materials and bodies, showing the savage side of e-waste that I return to in Part C of the thesis. However, this chapter focuses on the workshop as a workplace where labour is exerted and commodities produced. The workshop is an assemblage of history and labour, ethnicity and kinship relations, valorisation and value transformation, and ingenuity and innovation. At the workshop, traditional techniques and late-capitalist technologies meet to address waste problems, create livelihoods, and foster entrepreneurship.
In this chapter, I describe the histories, material conditions, social and labour relations, and cultural logics through which my walimu at Mahakama Ya Friji work with waste and create value. Informal waste labour places in African cities are places of complex gatherings (Guyer, Denzer, Agbaje, & Center for Social Science Research and Development (Nigeria), 2003).
Though these places are segregated in many cases, placed out of sight as ‘other’ places, they form networks of waste metabolism, and involve or gather vibrant social-political, economic, and biological lives. Recent literature on waste places reveals that waste labour is an outcome of colonial and postcolonialism arrangements (Nguyen, 2018), ethnicity and class divisions (Gregson, Crang, Ahamed, Akhter, & Ferdous, 2010; Millar, 2014, 2018), racism and caste systems (Gregory, 1997), politics (Douglas, 2003; Fredericks, 2018), innovations and technological changes (Gabrys, 2011), and global interconnectedness (Lepawsky, 2010, 2018;
Lepawsky & Mather, 2011).
In Dar es Salaam, there are hundreds of small e-scrap backyard workshops like the Mahakama Ya Friji (Kyessi & Omar, 2018). Although these workshops are scattered all over the city, they share certain features: their locations, innovations and ingenuity, and flexible work arrangements. The labour processes in these places are hybrids of traditional arrangements, salvage accumulation, and ownership of the means of production. Kinship and ethnic relations are sources of labour assemblages and moral guidance and means of conflict resolution. These are workspaces where ordinary people innovatively use local knowledge, skills, and networks together with new technologies to transform waste objects into value (Mavhunga, 2014).
Workshops are usually located in small, open backyard spaces in dense, low-income neighbourhoods, typically sandwiched between other small businesses. Their locations are negotiations between visibility to customers and minimal interaction with state apparatuses, mainly the police and tax authorities. As explained in the introduction, the workshops form
synergistic relations with other small business that become part and parcel of the waste economy. Food vendors, kiosk owners, repairers, and beverage sellers tend to surround workshops. The workshops become economic vibrant spots that connect to local, national, and global economies.