Arbakesh

ARBAKESH (porter)

Aldabay - a jigit from Karakalpakistan (Uzbekistan's autonomy), 27 years old, married, has a son, old parents and 2 younger brothers. He comes to Almaty every spring for half a year to earn money for his family.

Aldabay pushes his cart on a wholesale vegetable market. Every day he pays about 3$ to the markets administration for the cart's rent and the right to work on the market.

- I work from 4 a.m. untill 8 p.m. every day. Vegetable production workers bring the goods before the sunrise. Then we unload the cargo and bring it to the sellers. After that, during the day, i serve for customers and try to please them. My job is pretty hard and needs a lot of strength. Therefore i need to eat well for 3$ a day and can't save money on my lunch.

I have to walk around the market with customers for 2-3 hours to pick the goods. Sometimes i become a guuide who tells the customers about prices for the goods, gives advices, shows places where the goods are cheaper, better. For that job i get around 1.5$, but if i am able to say about hard life in Karakalpakistan, where we have nothing but desert and a drying Aral sea, i get a little bonus for mercy.

Roads on the marketplace are very narrow, i always have to scream to bystanders to get out of my way. Sometimes carts collide with each other, we swear. Sometimes i get beat by customers whose feet i pressed with my cart.

On this marketplaces there are around 500 arbakesh(porters). All of them, like Aldabay, are not local and live in a room with 8 men in it. Such housing does not have any commodities, they sleep on mats mattresses on the floor and pay 1$ each for the night.
Despite great competetion i manage to save up 400$ in 6 months, sometimes a little bit more. My family is able to live on that money the whole year. I can not work during winter, because the market is dank, dirty, my shoes often sop, and I get cold a lot. There are more expenses than earnings. When the rain season starts we go back home.

Next spring i will come with my brother, who is turning 17, then both of us will have a job.

Видео Arbakesh канала Азамат Боранбаев