The Price of the Church

A knock came at our door this morning from Samuel, one of the men to whom Glenn and I offered a job as a coordinator of our micro-enterprise development program. He stopped by to discuss some of the position's details.

Salary, it turns out, is a sticking point.

Some Mozambicans have an expression for jobs that don't pay very well. They pay the price of the banana. Bananas are cheap and so, I presume, are those employers.

There's a lesser-known expression, too. The price of the church. Apparently in the grand hierarchy of employment, the church is even cheaper than the banana.

It's that way for good reason. People are supposed to work for the church not for the promise of riches, but because they have a passion for the work. They accept such jobs because they feel a calling from God and willingly accept the sacrifice.

Sure, my conscience says, but that can't become an excuse for the church to abuse its employees, especially when the purpose of our program is to develop Mozambicans' economic well-being to ensure that hunger and illness are distant memories.

Besides, we want to allow them sufficient time and motivation to operate their own micro-enterprises, like Samuel's barber shop, so that they are received as credible, knowledgeable micro-enterprise trainers. We also don't want to cut them off from all other economic activity, knowing that this year's salary is backed by a promise, and next year's is backed by a hope. Nothing, until we have sufficient money in the bank, can be backed by a guarantee.

So what is a fair salary in a third-world country? We are offering a salary of 2,500 meticais -- or a little under $100 -- a month which is, apparently, the price of the church.

I don't have access to a proper salary survey to benchmark against, but I do know what some others are paying. I have only enough information to know that we're offering neither the highest nor the lowest of salaries.

And we're offering a high enough salary that nobody ever quotes it in the context of defining the poor. Extreme poverty is usually defined to be those people who earn something less than $1 per day. Half of the world, the same sources usually quote, live on less than $2 per day.

At $100 a month -- $3.29 a day -- our salary is, according to Samuel, higher than what entry-level government jobs are paying in Maputo. And, to be clear, Samuel wasn't arguing for a ten-fold increase, but a ten- or twenty-percent increase, not unlike anyone at home trying to squeeze out a slightly higher salary.

I have no illusions that this salary is anyone's idea of a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's not going to leave anyone in Africa hungry or homeless, either.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that I approached the conversation in cavalier fashion. What moral footing do I have to argue that with the man sitting across the table from me in my $650/month apartment? Looking through my lens, I have made a huge sacrifice to live in Mozambique. To him, I am still a king, albeit perhaps one who relinquished a crown jewel or two. How can I look Samuel in the eye and argue that $100 a month is a good salary?

I've just closed the door behind my guest, and am feeling emotionally spent. I'm feeling a little bruised and beaten, not because Samuel was even remotely abusive or impolite. The bruises have been inflicted by my own conscience, battling the merits of offering a salary the size of which, I admitted to Samuel, would leave me starving to death.