Synergy in the salt mine

LABOUR in a salt mine is no fun at all, just ask those poor souls who work in the mines of Ethiopia’s Afar triangle. You see, Ethiopian salt miners earn approximately £5 for a day’s work, that’s roughly R85. This may seem like a fair wage, but consider that they work in temperatures that seldom dip below 50 degrees Celsius, often hovering around the 63 degree mark – making it one of the hottest places on earth. Also, they have to dig out the mineral, cutting out manageable salt blocks of roughly 5kg each, using crude home-made tools.

Can you imagine what the glare does to the workers’ eyes when the sun reflects off the salt in this almost 100 000 square kilometre basin?

After extraction the salt blocks are loaded onto camels and transported almost 80km to Berahile in Ethiopia; then, from their generous R85 a day salary, the miners have to fork out a special tax for each camel and each block of salt exported from the area. And if you’re wondering – about 1.3 million tons of salt is removed annually, and this by only 750 officially registered salt miners working in the area.

If you think that this salt mine is bad, there’s another one in our very city situated at the corner of Bean and Villiers streets in the CBD. At this mine, there are no actual camels and scorching temperatures, no crude tools or 80km treks after a day’s work, but these urban “salt miners” also toil tirelessly.

Every single day stories have to be hunted down, facts have to be checked, photographs have to be taken and pages have to be prepared, before even one page can be printed … and one thing you learn at a newspaper is that deadlines wait for no man. Meanwhile, in the background, there’s the marketing, advertising and many other cogs turning just so that we can send out our “camels” each day to deliver the latest news to the waiting public.

Can you imagine what the glare does to the workers’ eyes when they sometimes have to stare at a screen for six hours straight?

But if you think that this job sucks, what about teachers? Those people who have to try and help young people grasp concepts that the youth are not really interested in.

Then teachers sometimes have to take 20 or 30 minutes to try and explain an important concept to young people who have only a threeminute attention span.

Consider law enforcement officials who are tasked with serving and protecting the lawabiding citizens of our fair city.

With criminals becoming more resourceful and increasingly brazen – due to a perceived lack of intent by the law – to uphold and enforce the law must seem impossible.

I even cringe when I think of the challenges faced by those tasked with maintaining or beautifying our city, its parks, open spaces and sidewalks – while other citizens feel that littering is a form of job-creation … that’s idiotic. Littering is a form of vandalism!

How can we forget that the staff in our hospitals and other types of care centres around the city also struggle in their own salt mines … often unappreciated for the sacrifices they make?

What’s my point?

Simply this: If no one is going to understand the challenges that you and your colleagues face on a daily basis in your salt mine, we might as well be kind to each other.

Albert Schweitzer could have been hinting at this when he wrote: “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”