Flower vendors loading plants onto a Juba bound truck recently. Photo by faisal kasirye
It was a different scenario about two weeks ago. Huge trucks parked by the roadside for close to a week as young energetic 20-something-year-olds sweated in the blistering mid-day heat, carrying plants upon plants into the trucks, tiered into two sections to accommodate more. The vendors, smartly dressed and visibly excited about their customers, were busy in a tree shade for hours, calculating what was owed them. Some who earn a side income from this business had not gone to work. The usually dull area was abuzz with people and activity. These kinds of customers do not come by every day; they needed to be attended to in person and a huge transaction was at stake.
On a typical day, Deborah Nambajjwe, one of the vendors says business is slow. “It is a few sales here and there. You can make Shs20,000-100,000 on a good day or nothing at all for a whole week. Two years ago, we used to sell more in the rainy season when people would claim that the plants would easily take to the soil without watering but now, the trends are the same. Customers can come by in any season.”
The chubby Nambajjwe is wearing a spaghetti blouse and leaning on a tree breathless from ferrying two 20 litre jerricans of water from a stream in the nearby reeds about 30 metres away to water her plants. She is not among the lucky 50 from whom the Southern Sudanese have made purchases, a windfall that has left the vendors relishing the moment. The South Sudanese have come with an expert in botany, a fairly old man with a bald head that leaves a small patch of grey hair near his neck.
“I did not have the plants they wanted, so they bought from those who had. It was their lucky day,” Nambajjwe says. She explains that the South Sudanese want plant species that can do well in their arid country. Apparently, they came around a year ago as well and she made some sales.
“They took about 10 trucks full of plants last year but some plants did not do well, so they changed the types they want. This time round, they were taking the cane palm which costs Shs 7,000, a plant called Alexandria also at 7,000, the Badam tree at Shs 5,000, Dranta, a hedge plant at Shs 500, and another called spider at Shs 2,000. With irrigation, these can flourish in the heat of South Sudan,” she says. Pricing depends on how much time and care a plant takes to reach the point at which it can be comfortably sold. Some, like the palm trees spend months in the flower garden, some spend weeks and the longer it spends the more amount of water they need.
Frank Kato one of the young men who is loading the plants on the trucks says that on this particular truck, they are loading about 1,500 Alexandria, 2000 Spider, 1500 Badam tree seedlings, 3,000 cane palms and 3,000 Dranta.
Quick calculation puts the harvest from this truck at close to Shs 45m. And if the South Sudanese took seven of such trucks, it means the traders walked away with about Shs 315m. Dividing this among the 50 traders means each on average could have made about Shs 6.3m.
A case of dealing too soon
But a group of vendors sitting despondently at the side weren’t the only ones unexcited about the killing. Charles Kawuma, the trailer driver who came with the South Sudanese thinks the Ugandan flower vendors conceded too soon. “They should have held firm. In fact they should get an association that will determine their prices such that all of them state the same price. They fell over themselves too soon,” he argues.
Nambajjwe quickly hits back claiming that they have an association but that their leaders cheat them. If a customer wants a plant at Shs 10,000, this leader will go bargain and come back claiming he is offering say Shs 3,000, she says, so they don’t sell through leaders.
“And because we are quite many and some people are more eager to make a quick buck after selling nothing for weeks, you can only deal as fast as possible knowing that if you do not agree to this price, any price, your neighbour will. The plants are also withering due to the excess heat. So selling them off at a marginal profit is better than losing them, like these ones,” she says pointing to her withered palm trees.
By Agnes Namaganda, Daily Monitor
