Hey folks!
Some of you may be interested in this article and photos. It was in the day before yesterday's Washington Post and is about a fellow from Mali living in Atlanta. To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37511-2002Dec10.html
La vie a "Zotto" c'est aussi ca!
Have a great week end. Jude
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Two Jobs and a Sense of Hope
By Anne Hull
Last of four articles
Atlanta -- The toilet is stuffed with paper and flooded. Adama Camara retrieves the mush from the water. He's assigned to clean the men's restrooms on Concourse A of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.
Swabbing the floor, he's always careful not to let the strings of the mop touch the wingtips and loafers around him. He puts in new paper
towels. He wipes down the latrines and then mucks out the stalls.
Adama does not complain. He will only say, "The people stink."
He speaks four languages but works quietly. He's often mistaken for a
black man in the Deep South's sense instead of a newly arrived immigrant
from west Africa. One day he's scouring the men's bathroom across from
Gate A-19 when a black American walks up. The stranger looks at him and
asks, as if to shake Adama awake, "Man, why do you work in here? This is
nasty."
It took Adama a while to figure out what the man meant, why he was so
bothered.
Displayed under glass at the Atlanta airport is Martin Luther King
Jr.'s preacher robe, his watch and his handwritten letters with words
scratched out, the words begging for a new day to dawn.
Here it is almost 40 years later and a young black man is scrubbing
toilets in the gateway to the South.
For Adama, an immigrant from the threadbare country of Mali, cleaning
bathrooms for $6.23 an hour is better than marching off to the diamond
mines of Sierra Leone.
"You've never tasted collard greens?" This question has been asked of
Adama many times, and the asker is always shocked, as if Adama has
failed a test.
When Adama came to Atlanta, part of the past decade's wave of
immigration to the South, he was swept into a narrative he was
unprepared for. He stepped off the Greyhound with just one suitcase but
with two centuries of baggage.
He didn't realize that his job emptying garbage cans was full of
symbolism. It wouldn't occur to him to be angry. He has no antenna for
racial slights.
One afternoon, a black American co-worker of Adama is sitting in a
motorized cart parked on the busy concourse. A white man comes rushing
up and gestures to the car. "Where do these things get dispatched?"
"Dispatched?" the worker says.
The man's face falls. "I'll use another word," he says,
condescendingly.
Adama is unbothered by such exchanges. "No problem," he'll say, which
can irritate his co-workers, who have suffered such exchanges for years.
With a workforce of 44,800, Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport is
the largest employment center in Georgia. Such a huge job bank is not
lost on the flood of new immigrants. But after the terrorism of 9/11,
the airport adopted tighter security measures, and anyone without the
right documents couldn't get security badges. Many Latinos vanished.
Africans are filling the void.
Africans make up only 2 percent of the 4.1 million people in metro
Atlanta, but their numbers are increasing. They come from Ethiopia and
Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Sierra Leone, all parts of the continent
affected by war, famine or political upheaval. They are wresting the
airport taxi business away from American cabbies, many of them black.
They're working fast food and customer service. Some are hesitant to
share details of their past. "I ran from a dictator," says an African
wheelchair pusher. Most are young and just desperate for work.
Adama's home of Mali in west Africa has been tormented by drought and
dictatorship. Mali was once a kingdom on the gold route and later a
French colony known as French Sudan. Democratic since 1991, Mali is an
impoverished country of 10 million people.
Adama is from the capital city of Bamako. But if asked he will say
Nara, because the custom is to claim the village or city where your
father was born. In Bamako, Adama lived in a cement house with his
father, his father's two wives and their 13 children. No phone, sporadic
electricity and not much of a future.
In 1999, at age 19, with a high school education, Adama left Mali for
New York. He had relatives in Brooklyn. He worked at a car wash during
the winter, earning $3.75 an hour. He was called "nigger" for the first
time, by a black customer who didn't like the way Adama buffed his car.
In the spring, Adama took a bus to Atlanta. He had remembered it from
watching the 1996 Olympics, and it seemed like a place where his hands
would thaw.
Adama landed on Buford Highway, the heart of immigrant Atlanta,
crashing at a cousin's apartment. On his second day, he saw a group of
Mexican men standing on Buford Highway and joined them to wait for
pick-up work. Next, he got a job at a car wash, where the boss made the
immigrant workers clock off during slow spells and clock back on when
business picked up. Finally, Adama heard that Africans were getting
hired at the airport.
Now the airport is his whole existence. He has two-full time jobs on
Concourse A. He begins at 6:30 a.m. as a janitor for Initial Contract
Services. From 3 to 11, he works at the Budweiser Brew House and Smoking
Lounge, where he is a member of the utility crew.
His 16-hour work days are numbingly boring and physically grueling. He
sleeps four or five hours most nights and takes 300 milligrams of Motrin
for his aches. In seven months of working two jobs, he has never called
in sick.
"On my day off, I have tea," he says, which means that when he has the
morning off, he walks to Publix to buy a baguette and returns to his
sparsely furnished apartment and boils water. He drinks his tea from a
small glass tumbler, Arabic-style, with lots of sugar.
He is 6 feet 3 with dark skin and a round scar on his right cheek. He
walks in a forward-leaning way. He wears a leather choker threaded with
an African shell. His English is lilting and accented by French. His
smile is so wide it consumes his face. The young women who work at the
airport volunteer their phone numbers, and he ducks his head shyly,
without bravado, and they find this totally exotic.
On Buford Highway, he shares an apartment with three other Malians.
Adama's bedroom is military neat. He sleeps on the floor because that's
what he did in Africa. A large digital clock is beside him. When the
alarm goes off and he is nauseated with fatigue, he fixes one thought in
his mind. "I think about the American dollar," he says. He splashes
water on his face, says his morning prayers and then throws himself into
the blades of another day on Concourse A.
The Atlanta airport is the busiest in the world, with 220,000 fliers
arriving, departing and connecting each day. Adama is right: The people
stink. They ball up dirty diapers, leave blood in the sink and use
Starbucks cups as spittoons.
Ron Willis is a corporate vice president of Initial Contract Services,
the cleaning company hired to oversee most of the 5.7 million square
feet of the Atlanta airport terminal complex. To Willis, a strapping
Southerner who loves University of Georgia football, cleaning is math,
and math is profit. Twenty years ago, it took an hour to clean 2,500
square feet of commercial space. Now, 5,000 square feet can be cleaned
in an hour. Riding vacuums and trash compactors have become more
efficient, but the main reason is that people are working faster. They
have to. Flights are departing earlier in the morning and landing later
at night than ever, shortening the window of cleaning time for the
overnight crew.
"Think of America in the last 20 years," says Willis, his voice rising
with passion. "We've improved in the world because of our productivity."
At ICS, the janitorial crew has gone from what Willis calls
"traditional" -- mostly single black women -- to 70 percent immigrant.
"Adama's rom Mali," Adama's black American supervisor says one morning
to a higher-up boss, who is white.
"It's a town called who?" the boss asks.
Adama is assigned the two busiest men's bathrooms on Concourse A. This
is Delta territory, with monstrous ebbing and flowing of crowds. It
takes Adama 15 minutes to clean a bathroom. He cleans each of his two
bathrooms 12 or 13 times a shift.
Clocking in at dawn, Adama walks through the airport, which still has
its night calm. The wide concourse gleams from a fresh cleaning. Yawning
passengers are just starting to arrive. Adama passes the Cinnabon,
wafting sweet and floury, but he is oblivious, silent, beaten back by
exhaustion from his late job.
By mid-morning, he emerges from one of his bathrooms and the concourse
is thick with travelers. Adama steers his cart carefully. His khakis are
splattered with toilet water and sink water. He bumps into Lucille, a
gray-haired Initial worker who's pushing her own yellow Rubbermaid bag
on wheels. "Roll on my foot so I can go home," she says to him, and he
smiles. A man walks up to a trash can between them, leans over and
spits.
Adama goes off to clean Gate A-19. He sweeps around the feet of a man
eating a Twix bar. When it's time for his 15-minute break, Adama takes
off his plastic gloves and walks down to the Initial office. It's behind
one of the scuffed, unmarked doors that line the concourse. Inside are
lockers, two vending machines, a desk, some chairs. Mostly it is a
refuge from the public. Two janitors are talking about bottled water, a
concept that still astounds.
"I throw it away all day long," says a worker named Banita. "Water,
water, my, they waste it."
Another employee named Pamela reports how a man yelled at her earlier
in the morning for tossing the remains of his food in the garbage. "One
little crumb," Pamela says, shaking her head.
They are the invisible, and it bothers them.
"These people, they walk on the concourse; they don't see you; they
don't move," Banita says. Adama silently eats his Chick-fil-A biscuit.
He checks the time. One minute left on break. He crumples his wrappers
and returns to the concourse. He likes his co-workers but feels no
solidarity at living in history's shadow together. "We are different,"
he says, diplomatic enough to say this in private.
Most of the Americans think the Africans are arrogant. "They want to be
authoritative," says a janitor named Viola. "You are supposed to look up
to them. They say, 'no problem,' but they still got this attitude. Now,
that's a problem."
Viola glances toward Adama, who is rolling his cart into a gate area.
"Adama, though, he sweet."
The plane to Boston has just left the gate. Newspapers are everywhere.
Fried rice is scattered on the floor. A Seattle's Best Coffee has
spilled and Adama bends over the mess. CNN drones overhead. "In terms of
tech, the chip sector is a mixed bag today." Two fast-food workers on
break discuss employment options. Wall Street Deli is holding a job
fair.
Quitting time is 2:25, but by 2:15, most of the Initial workers are in
the office staring down the time clock, their purses wrapped around
their wrists and their bags bundled for the fleeing. Adama is still out
there cleaning.
After he clocks out, he returns to the men's bathroom he has just
cleaned. He goes into a stall with his backpack and strips out of his
blue Initial T-shirt. He puts on a green polo with a logo from the
Budweiser Brew House and Smoking Lounge. That job starts in 28 minutes.
"Adama, number eight, Bud Lite!"
The Budweiser Brew House and Smoking Lounge is an escalator ride up
from Concourse A. Adama works on the utility staff, changing kegs,
washing glasses and busing tables. Set among Anheuser-Busch and St.
Louis Cardinals souvenirs, there's a lively bar, nachos, good music and
an endless supply of ashtrays, all of which Adama wipes out a hundred
times a shift. A strange atmosphere for a Muslim. But familiar.
He takes a mop into the men's room. "There is pee on the floor," he
says. "Sometimes when you drink, you don't know what you do."
A blonde lights a Marlboro Gold as the bartender slides her a Cape
Cod. A big man talks on a cell phone while wolfing two chili dogs. Some
guys on stools order another round of Sam Adams.
The majority of the bartenders and servers are black American. The
majority of the utility staff is African. Adama's two closest friends
work here, Yacouba Goita and Malick Diallo, both from Mali. Their sense
of duty is out of proportion with their lowly tasks. They act like
maitre d's, not busboys. They patrol the tables, speaking in Bambara,
Mandingo or French, their white rags through their belt loops.
A boss lays a hat on Adama's head that says "Budweiser King of Beers."
The sound system blasts Grace Jones's "Pull Up to the Bumper" as rain
pelts the tarmac outside. The back walls are all glass and jets circle
like shark fins. Bad weather means flight delays. The bar is hopping.
"Adama, white zinfandel," the bartender shouts and Adama turns for the
stock room. He has tried to explain to his father what he does, but how
do you explain this? By 10 p.m., he has been working for nearly 15
hours. His back and arms throb from bending over a low sink to wash beer
glasses. His clothes and skin smell like ashes.
Last call at the Brew House. Adama mops out the place. Getting back to
Buford Highway where he lives requires a train ride and then a bus ride
that take an hour. It's nearly 1 a.m. when he lies down on his lion
blanket on the floor, the alarm clock set for 5:05 a.m.
"Dynasty" is the curse of Adama's life. With reruns of the TV show
broadcast in Mali, Adama's family thinks he is living high in America.
In reality, he earns $1,800 a month after taxes. He saves $800 and sends
$300 back to Mali, where he's essentially supporting a family of 17.
Lately, family members have been calling more frequently with their
wish lists. He is a human hotline in the land of plenty. One morning
he's cleaning the men's bathroom across from Gate A-19 when his cell
phone rings. "Alo?" he says. It's his brother calling from Mali. Daddy
says send more money.
Africa occupies a unique psychic space in Atlanta, a city known as the
black capital of the South and home to the nation's fastest-growing
black middle class. At the airport, the underground walkway to Concourse
A features a permanent exhibit of art from Zimbabwe. Adama rides the
escalator past the photos of wild hippos and giraffes, untouched by the
gesture to the motherland. "In Mali, the animals are in the zoo," he
says.
The cultural disconnect works both ways. Schree Potts-Ramsey is the
operations manager of the Budweiser Brew House and Smoking Lounge. Two
years ago, when she hired her first African employee, Potts-Ramsey, a
black American, didn't know what to expect. "Have you ever seen 'Coming
to America'?" she says, referring to the Eddie Murphy movie about a
fez-wearing African prince who visits America. "Okay, I'm thinking that,
and elephants."
As Potts-Ramsey hired more Africans, it fell to her to give them a
crash course on American customs. They may speak four languages and know
obscure facts about the 53 countries in Africa, but someone had to tell
them about deodorant.
"No, sweetie, not once a week, once a day," Potts-Ramsey explained. And
women? "Never dinner on a first date. Always lunch or brunch."
What is brunch? they wanted to know.
They are always setting out to explore America. Once they asked for
directions to Indianapolis. They claimed they were going on their day
off. "Yeah, right," Potts-Ramsey said. The next time they clocked in for
work, they presented her with a coffee mug that said "Indianapolis."
A few of the black American employees complain to Potts-Ramsey about
hiring so many Africans, citing their weak English. History may have
split them up centuries ago, but there is no natural cleaving back
together here at the Brew House.
Attempts are made. One afternoon, an American waitress named Yvonne
says to a Nigerian employee, "Did you hear about that lady from Africa
who they tried to bury up to her neck and then stone her?"
"No, I didn't hear about that," the Nigerian says.
"Well, Oprah's gonna help her," Yvonne says.
Potts-Ramsey is a more revered figure than Oprah in some parts of Mali.
Her photo hangs in several houses, sent home by the Brew House Africans.
They are grateful that she gave them $8.75-an-hour jobs and coached them
through life here. One Saturday, she was at home in the suburbs when the
doorbell rang. There were Yacouba and Malick. "We are here to clean,"
Yacouba announced. They even took down the ceiling fans and cleaned the
blades.
The next day, the doorbell rang again. This time, Yacouba and Malick
were dressed in African garb, brilliantly colored grande boubous and
silk hats.
"Where y'all goin', all like that?" Ramsey asked. They were
accompanied by 15 platters. "We have prepared dinner for you," Yacouba
said.
Adama has "the grip." Aching, fever, soreness everywhere. He is
exhausted. His one-hour commute to the airport from Buford Highway adds
n extra two hours to his double-shift workday. He decides he must leave
the immigrant life of Buford Highway and move closer to the airport.
He settles on a black neighborhood on the perimeter of the airport in
the city of College Park. The move takes him deeper into the experience
of being a black man in America. He's walking home from the bus stop one
night when a white police officer stops him. Where are you going? Where
are you coming from? Show me your I.D.
Adama isn't scared or angered by the incident; he is more unnerved by
the occasional sound of gunshots. His apartment complex has steel bars
and dyed-red bark thrown on the ground instead of grass. Jets scream
overhead. Adama lives with two other Malians who split the $650 monthly
rent. Across the street, a Nigerian runs a convenience store called
Quick and Cheap with bullet-proof glass and gouging prices: $1.29 for
the can of peas Adama buys.
Adama is so careful with money that he examines a pack of Wrigley's
before buying it. But he wants to buy a car. With a car, he would be
able to take a girl to dinner instead of meeting her at Plane Delicious
at the airport food court.
Raiding his savings account, he buys a 1994 Mazda. The car conks out
while he's driving home from work. The problem is grave, he learns the
next day, when a shade tree mechanic from the Ivory Coast comes over
with Yacouba and Malick to diagnose the car. It's the engine. No one
told Adama that a car engine requires oil.
The mechanic advises that a used engine will cost $800. Adama goes
upstairs to his roachy apartment. Condoleezza Rice is on TV. Adama turns
off the sound and plays his music. He is homesick. He looks out the
window and sees run-down apartments identical to his own. He puts his
head in his hands.
He calls Yacouba and says he's catching the train up to Buford
Highway. Yacouba, who has recently discovered bowling, goes to the Asian
market and buys a frozen lamb's head. Soup is on the way. Malick comes
over. They all watch the news in French on satellite TV. They pop in
bootleg dance videos from home, the bouncing sounds of Salif Keita
competing with the accordions from the Mexican apartment next door. Ten
miles from Turner Field, the tiny seeds of Mali.
When it gets late, Yacouba makes a pallet for Adama on the floor and
hands him an alarm clock.
"He is lonely where he lives now," Yacouba says.
In Mali, Adama knew one white person, a Mormon missionary. That's one
more than he knows in Atlanta, after 14 months of living here.
His neighborhood, with its gospel roller rink, neckbone specials, fish
houses and tabernacle churches, begins to feel more familiar. He
recently saw two skinny boys from Togo kicking a can down the sidewalk.
"More Africans be staying over here now," Adama says, the schoolhouse
English he learned in Mali giving way to the local blend.
Adama begins dating an black American woman named Machika Lowe, who's
23 and works at the Oscar Mayer Hot Dog Construction Company at the
airport. "You want to go to a '70s party with me tonight?" Machika
calls to ask on a Saturday night. Adama has no clue what she's talking
about but somehow their relationship works. He takes her to Buford
Highway and treats her to an African hair braiding.
Ask Yacouba what his future holds and a look of total peacefulness
crosses his round face. "We are going home," he says. Adama? He's not so
sure. Maybe he will save enough money to open an African merchandise
kiosk in Underground Atlanta. One thing is certain. He wants only one
wife. In America, how could you ever afford two?
Instead of the '70s party, he sleeps for 12 hours and arrives at the
airport the next day at dawn. Sunday mornings on Concourse A have their
own gentle rhythms. Master Shine the shoe shine man plays gospel music.
Can we get some church in here? Shirley Caesar sings.
A janitor who works with Adama rolls his cart of trash by and tips his
chin. "Hey, doctor," he says. Adama knows every inch of this place,
dirty or clean. He's taking classes at the airport to apply for a job as
a $10-an-hour customer service assistant. But for now he bends over a
garbage can slimed with Manchu Wok noodles. Just as he removes the bag
to put in a new one, a man dumps a plate of food into the unlined can.
Adama picks it out by hand.
The world of garbage is unrelenting, but pride is still eked out
wherever possible. One of Adama's colleagues comes to work with a set of
French wrap nails and a beauty parlor 'do. In the Initial break room, a
supervisor tries to advise another woman on what kind of car to buy.
She's tired of the bus. He suggests an economical Kia. "I won't ride in
a Kia," she says.
By the time Adama clocks off, Concourse A is knotted with travelers
and strollers and rolling luggage. It's Sunday and that means no second
job at the Brew House. Adama disappears into the men's room and comes
out wearing a T-shirt that says "Dirty Dirty," a reference to the rap
genre known as the Dirty South. He walks through the terminal and then
up the MARTA train platform, where he boards a car. Except for two Dutch
tourists with backpacks, everyone has on a stained uniform. The 3
o'clock shift workers have punched out. Adama sits next to a contingent
from Popeyes.
After one stop he gets off at College Park and waits for the bus. A
young man with a gold tooth gives him a nod. "I like your shirt, man,"
he says.
"Thank you, man," Adama says, giving a smile that is unreturned.
The day is wan and pale. Summer is gone but there is no fall, only a
lack of color and heat. On the bus to Flat Shoals, Adama sits under a
Church's Chicken ad. Three pieces and a biscuit for $1.99. Someone has
scrawled on the seat in front of him, DA SOUTH.
The bus passes pines and red clay, and rumbles over railroad tracks.
The windows are open. A breeze blows across the silent passengers,
anesthetized by fatigue. Adama closes his eyes and falls asleep.
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