PARIS, April 29 — Shopkeepers, dustmen, delivery people, cleaners, postmen — they’re some of the jobs making life under lockdown possible.
Often low paid, sometimes invisible or even scorned, these roles have today become essential in a world gripped by the coronavirus pandemic.
AFP photographers have taken portraits of workers doing these jobs, whether to stave off hunger, or out of a sense of duty, feeling sacrificed or valued.
They’re not applauded every night from balconies in France or Italy like medics on the front line, but they have gained a new recognition as “second-line” workers in the fight against Covid-19.
And sometimes they receive a “thank you” scribbled on a bin left out for pickup or a supermarket shopfront in appreciation.
Without them, there would be nothing to eat, no communicating or getting around, no sanitisation or burials. For the most part, it’s done without more than a mask, hand gel and distancing measures.
Around 50 workers in 25 countries agreed to be photographed by AFP between April 18 and 25 at their workplace.
From between grocery shelves, outside a butcher’s or baker’s, beside a bus or rubbish bin, in a kitchen or at a cemetery, they conveyed their vulnerability, anger, sense of mission or pride.
Survival
For some, it’s about not going hungry at a time when the pandemic has torpedoed economies, sending millions into unemployment across the globe.
Afghan Zainab Sharifi, a 45-year-old mother-of-seven working at a Kabul bakery, said she didn’t have a choice. “Hunger will kill my family before the coronavirus if I do not work,” she told AFP.
Some go despite the fear in their heart.
“The risk is everywhere, it’s a risk for everyone, because you’re afraid to get infected and infect the others,” said Ivorian Fatou Traore, 43, a cleaner at the Cremona hospital in northern Italy.
In Portugal, fishmonger Emilia Lomba, 64, talks of all the people with whom she interacts and the banknotes she touches every day at the market in Lisbon. She has to pay her bills, she said.
Others fear they’re being sacrificed by society.
“Who wants to work under these conditions?” asked Larissa Santana, 26, who sells a popular snack called acaraje from a street food stall in Salvador, north-eastern Brazil.
“But there is no other way. Work is at a shortage,” said the mother of a three-year-old son.
Dressed in orange overalls, French rubbish collector Thierry Pauly, 54, continues his rounds in the eastern city of Mulhouse because of what he describes as his “professional conscience”.
But he’s angry. His job is “still at risk but not recognised”, he said.
A duty
Others feel duty-bound, such as those keeping public services running, like Bulgarian tram driver Stoyanka Dimitrova.
“Someone has to do this,” the 49-year-old told AFP in Sofia.
“Everyone chooses his profession on his own and should carry his cross.”
People still need their mail, 53-year-old Aline Alemi, a postwoman in Hayange in eastern France, says bluntly.
But she has adjusted her hours to run into fewer people and never hands over packages in person now.
Pulling up the shutters can feel like a personal act of civic responsibility in troubled times.
Jackie Feeney’s village store is the only one in Glenarm in Northern Ireland.
It’s “a lifeline for the community”, she said.
“Some are elderly and it’s maybe their only chance to get out for essential items and a chat,” she added. Even if it’s through a Perspex screen at the checkout.
Some take it in their stride.
“It is quite normal for me to do my job with all the protective gear and showing responsibility towards the society, my family, and myself,” Serbian bus driver Marjan Andjelkovic, 45, said in Belgrade.
Similarly, funeral director Patrick Blake, 65, in Derrylin, Northern Ireland, said there’s a duty “to deliver beyond the actual funeral arrangements, providing face-to-face access, advice and support for bereaved families”.
Battling the virus
Working can also be a way of battling the virus.
By delivering groceries in Halat, north of the Lebanese capital Beirut, Anas, a 29-year-old Syrian, feels like he’s doing his bit “like doctors on the front line”.
In Rio de Janeiro, a task force has been set up to disinfect the roads of the Santa Marta favela by 39-year-old Thiago Firmino, born and raised there.
“I choose to combat the problem rather than wait for the virus to knock on my door,” he said.
Although he needs money for cleaning products, tools and protective gear, he says he’s “prepared to take risks” to protect where his family and friends live.
Sometimes the motive is an act of humanity. In Johannesburg, teacher Rize Jacobs, 63, volunteers at a kitchen preparing food for street children because she says to “be here, on earth, assisting where we can, to me it is a blessing”.
In Glasgow too, Robin Barclay, 30, a cleaning company director, says “it is a natural step... to offer our sanitisation services for free to vulnerable areas and people”.
“It’s strictly non-profit, it’s about humanity and our duty of care to our community. Ultimately, if we can prevent just one person from contracting the virus, it will all be worth it.” — AFP
