PAYDAY IN MANDALAY
“Working for peanuts” means toiling for a very low wage. Sometimes, unfairly low.
Many have been wondering where this expression came from. What were its origins? Was it anything real? Is there anyone out there receiving a meager paycheck made of ground crops?
I went to a remote corner of this world and discovered that some slang has, well, a grain of truth.
“Working for peanuts is all very fine…”
“But I can show you a better time”, wrote Lennon and McCartney. One can assume they knew what they were talking about. Indeed sometimes “peanuts” could stand for a non-monitory compensation such as the promise of a would-be starlet, like the one in that famous Beatles song.
This is not the case, however, in the fields of central Burma. On the vast and fertile Irrawaddy Valley just north of Mandalay, working for peanuts means just that. Forget your bank account, bring a big straw basket instead.
How big is your basket?
It was a sunny, humid hot day in the dry season. My good friend Alon and I navigated our ragtag, Burmese-made “Shan Star” Jeep, barely making it through the deep crevices of the dirt road. In this remote corner of Burma, the road is made for ox carts with 150cm-high wooden cartwheels, not for 4×4.
So there we were, hot (no air condition), limping (the vehicle was literally falling apart, shedding pieces as it went along), and with no real idea where we’re going (guess-what, no road signs).
The view was monotonous. Endless flat fields of crops, and armies of women pickers attending them. It seemed as if nothing could break the dullness. Fortunately enough, as we did discover a short time late, we did have one thing on our side after all – luck.
An armored truck in Burma can be no more than a heavy ox cart manned by two guards and a bookkeeper. One of them just crossed the road in front of us.
Reality check
Payday had come to the Irrawaddy Valley and we were about to witness what “working for peanuts” really means.
As the cart parked, the woman had stopped their work, each grabbing a large straw basket, and approach the three men which by now were standing on top of what can only be described as a Pile of Cash. Looking back, we noticed lines of additional pickers approaching us from all nearby fields.
The bookkeeper was writing notes in his notebook as he handed orders to the two guards to fill the women’s baskets with peanuts – each according to a meticulous calculation completely foreign to us, but apparently very familiar to just about anyone else. With baskets full, each and every picker lifted her – now heavily laden – container on her head and went her own way. The whole ordeal was quite, organized and quite brief as if managed by a law known and familiar to just about everyone. Well, everyone excluding two foreigners who stood there flabbergasted.
It didn’t take more than 10 minutes and payment day was over.
As the “Shan Star” Jeep slowly rattled its way through the back-corners of Burma, two spoiled and fortunate tourist were slowly realizing how fortunate they are to have the paycheck come in the form of a check, not of farm produce.