PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Nigeria kidnapping-UK mil to be involved.
Old 12th May 2014, 20:22
  #55 (permalink)  
BEagle
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
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To be fair, many Westerners have no idea about the very low wages paid to many African employees.

I was stuck with a dead jet in Dakar many years ago - the other 3 had flown back to the UK. One of the hotel's African cleaners asked me about a crate of empties which one of my colleagues had left in his hotel room. At first I thought he was making a complaint about the state of the room, but it soon became clear that he was saying that he'd be quite happy to remove them. But he pleaded for a note to say that he'd been allowed to take them, in order not to be accused of theft. I don't know how much a crate of empties gained him at the market, but he was very grateful.

When I was at school in the late 1960s, we had a few boys whose fathers were in colonial service in Africa. A friend told me how much their Nyasaland 'houseboy' was paid - or rather, how little. When I asked why they didn't pay him more, he told me that, if they did, it would very probably be a death sentence for the poor chap - someone would soon knock him on the head and be after his better paid job.

Greed and corruption at every level, it would seem.
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