Horse 949 - Not Laughing at $31

While the world goes O'Barmy, the BBC threw this report up during Background Briefing on the radio this morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7813418.stm



Motorcyclists in Nigeria have been wearing dried pumpkin shells on their heads to dodge a new law forcing them to wear helmets, authorities say.
Officials in the northern city of Kano said they had stopped several riders with "improvised helmets", following this month's introduction of the law.
Kano Federal Road Safety Commission commander Yusuf Garba told the BBC they were taking a hard line with people found using the improvised helmets.

"We are impounding their bikes and want to take them to court so they can explain why they think wearing a calabash is good enough for their safety," he said.

This at first sounds like a haha that's funny story, until you consider all of the implications.

Even a cheap motorbike helmet in Australia is likely to set you back about $60. Remember that this isn't Australia we're talking about but Nigeria where the GDP per capita is about $2027 a year. If you assume that GDP is a fair measure of wages, the the average wage is a paltry $38.98 a week. This means to say that a helmet (not the motorbike) but just the helmet, is going to cost you one and a half times your weekly wage. If you then consider"passengers often steal the helmets once they reach their destination" then having what is in effect your weekly wage stolen every so often, is pretty scummy.
Let's put this in perspective, if someone stole $1500 from you, you'd be pretty miffed I'm sure of it.

It does however highlight something which I find a little disturbing though. When GM and Chrysler were given $25,000,000,000 the world seemed to breath a sigh of relief, yet if someone in Nigeria is fined 3000 Nigeria Nairas or just $31 for the privilege of barely scraping a living, the natural reaction is to laugh at them. Somewhere in all of this we appear to have lost the value of $1, it might not seem like a lot to us in the West, but in some parts of the world, people's livelihoods are eked out on less than what we might pay to go to the movies and there's not really a happy ending either.