Outsourcing Your Daily Chores

I’ve been thinking about this whole outsourcing issue again (why am I so obsessed with this issue of outsourcing?). Anyway, I was thinking about this issue because for the past two weeks, I have been trying to work on this website and I got stuck. There were some things I needed to do and I just couldn’t figure out how to get it working. So, finally, after banging my head against the table, I gave up and went to Elance.com to look for a programmer who could do it for me. After going over all the bids I received, I finally found a couple of designers from Bangladesh who said they could do what I needed to do and since their pricing was right, I hired them. What a relief that was!

I know a lot of people who like to design their own websites, but generally, I have found that I can tell when a site has been designed by a professional and when it has not been and I just think it’s worth it to shell out a few hundred dollars and get a well designed, professional looking website. So, I was very glad to hand that headache – inducing work off to the Bangladeshis because it was going to free me up to work on other things, which I needed to get done. Incidentally, someone had recommended a Kenyan to me and when I emailed him to ask how much he charged, he said $50 dollars an hour. I then told him that he’d never be able to compete with the Indians at that price range and he should go to elance.com and check out his global competition. To my surprise, he’d never heard of these on-line outsourcing companies that are providing employment to many freelance designers! So, I thought about this guy and wondered why Kenyans are so reluctant to venture outside of Kenya for their business needs. And by the way, some of these freelance designers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, one does not need to confine themselves to the borders of their home country anymore.

However, even outside of these on-line businesses, this outsourcing phenomenon is taking place in other areas and in other industries. I was talking to a friend the other day who said she’d thought about doing her own gardening, but realized that for jus $90 a month, she could outsource it to Mexicans and they’d get everything done for her (and after she hired them, she said it was the best thing she’d done).

I know another friend and her brother were tired of cleaning their house every weekend and their solution was to outsource their cleaning services – they hired a part-time cleaner who comes in once a week and cleans their house and my friend said that it was totally worth it.

Now, I know those living in Kenya don’t have to worry about this because labor is cheap. However, there you have another extreme. I was talking to yet another friend, who’d moved back to Kenya a few years ago and even though she lives alone, she has a house worker. So, she said this guy comes in everyday and does her cooking for her, cleans the house and even does some of her laundry. Anyway, one day she came home and he’d done all her laundry, ironed her clothes and folded them neatly on top of her bed. However, he’d forgotten to put them in the drawers for her and when she got home from work, she was kind of irritated that she’d actually have to get up and put her own clothes in the drawer! As soon as she said that, we both burst out laughing because we realized how ridiculous it was and how different her life had been when she lived in America.

She also said this is why so many middle to upper middle class Kenyans are putting on so much weight. They don’t move! They get in their cars and drive to work and once they get home, they just sit. It’s a very sedentary lifestyle, which very quickly leads to obesity.

So, if you live in America or even Europe, are you beginning to outsource a lot of your daily chores? And if you are based in Kenya are you getting fatter because your just sitting on the couch while your maid does everything for you?

The best outsources of these daily chore businesses are the Brazilian immigrants. They’re even beginning to piss off the mzungu’s because they are getting so good at it and because they work for themselves. I was sitting at a coffee shop a few days ago and I overheard these two mzungu guys who were union representatives complaining about their wages and one guy said this: “you know who the problem is right it’s those fucking Brazilians”. These two guys, both of whom looked to be in their 60’s, had grown up in a different era. An era of union wages and protectionism, but that’s all finito and they were having a hard time accepting this new reality of cheap, immigrant labor and non-union wages.

After hearing this, I thought to myself, this is the wrong attitude to have in this economy of outsourcing. It’s easy to get angry, but if someone is offering lower prices, you have no choice, but to figure out how to compete. Getting angry is not going to solve your problem.

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