I, after the 80s, and my husband have been in Africa for 15 years, only to make money and not to spend money, but it is difficult to return to China
Original2022-07-12 10:01 · Selfie
This is the 312nd true story of "Selfie"
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Xu Yuanyan/Dictation
Wang Mandi/Written
Croak/Edit
My name is Xu Yuanyan (@Jiaying's mother overseas), born in 1987 in Huating Town, Putian, Fujian Province, and many people may be more familiar with my screen name "Jiaying Mother".
I took a picture of myself in front of my shop.
Since 2007, my husband and I have been living in Malawi, Africa, for 15 years, spending almost my entire youth in Africa, where our two children were born.
However, Malawi's living conditions and education level are far inferior to those in China, and when it comes to school age, we can only put our children in the country as left-behind children and return to Africa to earn money. Life in Africa is very hard, and I miss children, but the reality does not allow us to reunite as a family, which is very helpless.
Our wedding photos.
My husband and I are in the same junior high school, he is one level higher than me, we have a good feeling for each other, and we are together. But after he graduated from junior high school, we lost touch.
After graduating from junior high school, I did not enter high school. My family asked me to re-read, but no matter how hard I tried, my grades just couldn't work. I felt that I was neither interested nor good at studying, and I was spent in school, so I might as well go out to work early. In 2003, I left school. Although my mother asked me to stay at home first, I couldn't stay, the economic conditions at home were not good, my parents relied on odd jobs to support the family, I also had a younger brother, how to eat idle meals at home?
At the beginning, I was under 18 years old and could not go to a regular factory, so I went to Jinjiang with my uncle to make shoe boxes, and every day I raced against the clock to glue shoe boxes, earning hundreds of yuan every month. I was not willing to have a meager income, so I went to a restaurant and coffee shop with a slightly higher salary to be a waiter, but when the waiter was very hard, standing for a long time to serve guests, often cramping his feet. Later, I happened to hear that the commission for selling mobile phones is high, and I went to the mobile phone store to apply for a shopping guide, relying on my own efforts, at the end of a month, I can get a salary plus commission, and I can also get thousands of pieces.
At that time, I also worked as a conductor at a lottery betting station and witnessed a customer win the five million jackpot. I didn't feel anything at the time, but now I feel pressured, and I think it's good to have money.
In 2004, my husband found my contact information through his cousin. It turned out that he went to a technical school after graduating from junior high school, but chose to drop out of school the next year and went out to work like me. The husband is also a left-behind child, and there is a younger brother and a younger sister below, and his parents have been out there to earn money to support the family. After my husband dropped out of school, the family didn't say anything. He worked in a tire factory and later went to help out at a snack bar owned by his parents.
I was a teenager.
After the reunion, we did not miss each other again. In 2006, we officially met both parents and got engaged in 2007. After the engagement, her husband's uncle, who was doing business in Africa, asked him to help. We are all still young, working hard in China for a month, we will earn one or two thousand yuan, I heard that going to Africa to "pan for gold" can make a lot of money, and there are indeed many people around us who have made money in Africa and come back to build a big house. I felt that I could make a lot of money going abroad, so I didn't hesitate to let my husband go to Africa. He went to Malawi, probably one of the poorest countries in the world, and had just established diplomatic relations with China in 2007.
Malawi is poor and backward, and many things were not seen here before, let alone bought. After the Chinese merchants came, basically all kinds of things could be bought. And Chinese goods are cheap and good, which is very popular here. Over the years, there have been more and more Chinese on this side, including opening factories to make sanitary napkins, paper towels, slippers, hardware, clothing stores, department stores, various types, and locals also like to Chinese. Doing business here is also much less competitive.
His uncle opened several stores, and my husband helped to see one of them. That shop is a hundred or two hundred kilometers from the capital of Malawi, in a very rural area. Every night at five o'clock in the evening, after the store closed, he lived alone in the store, very lonely. After half a year, in 2008, he invested tens of thousands of yuan in his hands, opened his own shop, sold clothes and shoes, and then took me over.
In 2008, my husband and I were reunited in Malawi.
At that time, his uncle was still living in the capital, and my husband rented two bedrooms and a living room behind his uncle's residence, so that they could take care of each other.
I didn't know anything about Malawi before I went and came straight over. At the moment when the plane was about to land, I saw that there was nothing in the white expanse below, and there was no house, and I felt that the country was really backward.
Neither of us had been abroad before, not in English, not even a "hello". In the beginning, there was no way to communicate with the locals, and everything was done by comparison. The first time I came to such a place, the language was not understood, the diet was not used to it, and when I saw all the locals, I thought they looked the same. At that time, I was still very scared and afraid.
I took a group photo with the local police in Malawi.
Looking back on the past 15 years in Africa, the most bitter thing is that when I first came, the money was invested in opening a shop, there was no money to buy a car, and I was reluctant to buy a refrigerator, and we didn't eat meat in the first month.
We didn't speak English, and we didn't have the Internet or smartphones at that time, so we came with an English translator. What I remember most clearly is that at the beginning I specifically learned two words, that is, cabbage and carrots, because there is no market near here, to buy vegetables to drive, at least 10 minutes to drive, so we have to ask the local workers to help us buy. In the beginning, I ate cabbage and carrots.
Now we can both communicate with the locals in English. At that time, when I was learning English, I took a book every day to translate the machine and learned it every day, such as learning from number one to one hundred today. The locals are not very good at English, sometimes they don't understand, we just point fingers, they are very good, and they know what you want to do.
Later, my father-in-law took another 30,000 yuan to us, and we bought the car. I didn't have a car for half a year, and I had to do business, so I had to either borrow my aunt's car or rent a car to deliver the goods.
This is one of the stores we opened when we first arrived in Africa.
Our first shop was small, only 40 or 50 square meters, open in a town one or two hundred kilometers from the capital. At that time, the exchange rate was relatively high, and the business was relatively good, so it was still quite easy to make money. Like we do this kind of business in Africa, you can make a store a year of fifty thousand, 100,000, at least to open 3, 4, a year at least can earn 300,000 or 500,000, so that it is cost-effective. But in the beginning we didn't have a car, our funds were limited, and we didn't know much English, so we only opened a shop.
After having a car, we opened a shop in another town, this shop is relatively large, there should be a hundred square meters, at that time should have invested 108,000 yuan, the store has just been open for less than a year, the shop next door is on fire, and our shop is also burned. My husband heard that it was on fire, rushed over overnight, smashed a door from the back of the warehouse, moved out a little bit of goods, and everything else was scorched. The second store was gone.
At that time, it was a particularly big blow to us, and we just started to make money and burned out. But there's no way. In a country like Malawi, even if the fire brigade rushes over, it is useless. Here is too backward, the conditions are limited, the fire brigade came, sprinkled a car of water to stop, tell you that there is no water, just watch it burn out, there is nothing left.
The second shop burned down, and we couldn't wait for the landlord to rebuild the house, so we looked for places to open shops in the small towns of Malawi, almost running most of the country.
Our car at the time.
The local traffic conditions are also relatively poor, some even dirt roads, no cement roads, we did not have navigation at that time, English is not good, all the way with people, while walking to inquire where there is a relatively large town.
After half a year, in 2009, a third store was opened. In the past 15 years, we have opened no less than 15 stores before and after, opened and closed, closed, closed the business is not good, and found other places to reopen, at most there are six stores at the same time.
I've encountered a variety of things since I opened my first store. The roofs of the houses on this side are all covered in tin, and once, at night, thieves came and opened a hole in the roof to come in and steal things.
Usually, there are always petty thefts in the store, which have been unavoidable for so many years. We do clothing and shoes, it is possible to inventory, but for so many years, there is no inventory when the goods are enough, the worst time, the entire store is worth sixty or seventy thousand, and the gap under the plate is nearly ten thousand.
And before I opened a store in the countryside, I went to the store for less, the turnover was deposited into my account by the manager, and once the manager told me that I was robbed and directly lost 20,000 yuan. Although the manager said it was a robbery, there was no evidence at all, no one was injured, they didn't call the police until we got to the store, and the police couldn't do anything. I can't say that they swallowed up the money together, only to fire all the employees in the store.
We got a couple of glass counters in the store and sold used phones.
In 2016, the clothing store could not open and went out of business, and we had thousands of yuan left on us. Before we had children, we took home all the money we earned, and only after we had children did we start saving money ourselves. In those years, my hometown built a house, and my mother-in-law had a serious illness, and the money we earned was basically spent.
At that time, I was faced with the situation of either returning to China or starting over in a different industry. After so many years in Africa, ending up with such a result, my husband felt unwilling and wanted to try again, so I borrowed eight thousand from my cousin, made up fifteen thousand dollars, and began to make second-hand mobile phones. At the beginning, we were busy every day, trying mobile phones day and night, earning money, but the loss rate of mobile phones was large, and we really calculated it and did not make any money. Later, after the source of goods was familiar, it became better and better, and sometimes even entered more than 100,000 goods at a time.
By making second-hand mobile phones, we finally earned our first pot of gold.
Until 2019, second-hand mobile phones are not profitable, my husband feels that this is not the way, just someone wants to transfer stores, he took 300,000 to pick up a department store supermarket.
In January this year, we invested another 500,000 yuan, opened a second department store, a two-hundred-square-meter supermarket, recruited 8 employees, and each row had to have a person watching, placing goods, handmade discounts, and being afraid of stealing. Many people here will steal, whether it is customers or employees, we do not seem to have a good way to prevent, can only rely on people and people to treat each other sincerely.
We now open a department store supermarket, invested 500,000 yuan, netizens after reading it said like the domestic two-dollar store.
Our energy is only enough to see one store, and the previous store, I handed it over to a more trusted local employee to help me see. Until recently, because of various reasons such as incomplete goods, the old store did not make much money, so we decided to simply shut it down and stop the loss in time.
Malawi is a big agricultural country, the cash crops are mainly cotton tobacco and corn, there is no industry, the air is particularly good. Shops generally close at five o'clock, and larger supermarkets are only open until seven o'clock, and will not do business like in China at eleven or twelve o'clock at night.
There is a lot of water here, and there are five or six hours of power outages almost every day. We have a generator in the store, but at home we simply rely on a flashlight to illuminate it.
The habits of the locals are also very different from ours, they get their wages and spend them, they don't say that like Chinese, every day is particularly stressful, and the money is saved. Most of the locals spend money and have a good day, wearing a beautiful dress and eating a good dinner. And they didn't have any pressure, I ordered a cup of coffee at the restaurant and served it two hours later. Had a very casual time.
When the power goes out, we put up a flashlight in the living room.
For so many years, we have been watching shops almost every day, going home at night to cook, eating, brushing our mobile phones to sleep, with almost no entertainment, no socializing. Before there was no network, homesick parents are buying a phone card to charge money to call home, especially expensive, 2010 has a network, only a little better.
The local staple food is called Xima, which is a paste made of cassava flour or corn flour, cooked a little thicker, and eaten twice a day, which is very full. They eat with their hands, take some west horses and pinch them, and then dip them in the soup. Generally eating is eaten on the ground, there is a dish, the seasoning is very monotonous, only salt. Cutting vegetables is also done directly by hand, without a cutting board. I once gave my employees two cutting boards, but neither of them took them out and used them.
We were not used to the local food, and there were only hamburger fries and so on in the restaurants outside, which we rarely went to eat. The vegetables and fruits in the market are very limited, and I have opened a vegetable garden myself and planted some cabbage, radishes, leeks and the like that Chinese like to eat, which solves the problem of no vegetables to eat.
Fortunately, the local pork, beef, and mutton prices are not high, and we can still achieve beef and mutton freedom.
I opened a vegetable garden in the yard and planted a lot of vegetables.
In Malawi, it is very rare to find a good worker, and there are very few people who can do business, write prices and place goods. Although their salaries are low, their efficiency is also low, and customers do not know how to take the initiative to introduce them.
The only difference is the African uncle who has followed me for 6 years, born in 1965, the most down-to-earth and industrious uncle I have seen here for so many years. I taught my uncle to grow vegetables, and then my uncle planted better than I did, and as long as he was free, he would help me take care of the vegetable garden and clean the yard. The uncle said that he had to rely on his own hands to work, and what he gained was wealth. I am especially grateful to have met someone like him in Africa.
Sometimes I don't think of him as a worker, but when he is a friend, an elder. I funded the tuition fees for several grandchildren of my uncle's family, hoping to help them.
Me and our uncle (right).
I got malaria in Africa in 2011, I didn't know I was pregnant, I took the injection and medicine, and then I returned to China for examination, the doctor said that the child was not OK, and at that time I also went to the big hospital in Fuzhou to see, and there was no way to save it, so I had to take it off.
At that time, my husband was alone in Malawi, and there was another car accident, the car and goods were destroyed, and he was also injured. I was dying. Later, my husband's neck has been uncomfortable, and it was that time that he left the root of the disease. When he returned to China for examination, the doctor said that if he was a little worse, he would be gone.
In 2013, I gave birth to my eldest son in Malawi, in the public hospital of the capital of Malawi, when I was about to give birth, my husband was still in the countryside to see the store, and as a result, he encountered trouble when he was born, probably because the fetal position was not correct, more than a dozen or twenty hours, he could not give birth, and then my husband went to pull the Chinese medical team to do a caesarean section, and gave birth to an 8-pound fat boy.
Photo of the birth of the son.
Later, when we gave birth to our daughter, we went directly to the private hospital here, and it was quite smooth.
Both children attend kindergarten classes in Africa, and when they live here, they often play with local children. Even have very nice friends. It's been almost three years since my daughter returned home, and she has forgotten all the local languages, but she still remembers the names of her former good friends.
My son (center) was in a local kindergarten in Malawi.
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Malawi's living conditions and education level are far from being comparable to those in China, and when our son finishes kindergarten, we can only send him back to China to be brought by his grandparents to prepare to go to school in China.
In 2018, I sent my son back to China, and when he was leaving, he kept crying and telling "Mom don't go.". Reluctant to have a child, I was so sad that I tore my lungs and cried all the way to the airport. In 2019, we sent our daughter back again. When he got home, his son didn't know us, and when he saw us, he went to the corner and hid, not letting me hold us, not letting me touch us. At that time, he was already a 7-year-old guy, but he looked at us strangely, and I will never forget it. Later I asked him why don't you let your mother hug you, and he said, I don't know you, you look different from the picture.
I was really sad not to grow up with him, all his things we couldn't participate in, missed all his childhood. One year my son was sick and hospitalized, and I felt very upset and distressed, but I had more than enough and not enough strength.
Sending my daughter back to catch up with the epidemic this time, I accompanied her at home for a year and a half, until 8 months ago, I returned to Africa. My daughter once asked me, give all my pocket money to the bank, can you come back early?
Daughter (second from right) and her friends. Now she had forgotten the local language and only remembered the names of her old friends.
Whether to come back to Africa or stay at home, I struggled for a long time. We have very few Chinese friends in Africa, and there were a few Zhejiang people here, and later they also returned to China. I'm not coming to Africa, my husband is very lonely here alone, life will be particularly difficult, not even a person who speaks Chinese. He can't cook rice, he can't eat enough for three meals in his life, and the last time I went back to China for a year and a half, he cooked porridge with squeezed vegetables or ate noodles every day.
Even the two of us here, we all have a particularly hard time, waiting for work at 8:30 in the morning, waiting for the door to close at 5:30 in the morning, no entertainment, no socializing, and every day there is a power outage. Come home and cook a meal, eat your couch and I'll brush my phone on a couch for a while, and then go to sleep, and that's it. Every day is like this, repeat this life, no day is different. Sometimes, to put it mildly, normal people living in Africa go crazy.
With me there, he is not so tired, the burden of thought is not so big, lonely can chat, time passes faster. But leaving China, my children will be left-behind children, and it is cruel to them.
It's really hard to choose.
Before leaving, I was with a pair of children.
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I once considered staying in China, letting my husband return home, we started over, I am not afraid of hardship. But my husband feels that we have not been in China for more than ten years, just like the people who lived in china in the 80s, after returning to China, they are too strange to China, they are very scared, very confused, many things are not understood, they can't keep up at all, and it is very difficult to return to China to start a business. Africa doesn't make much, but at least it's stable. If you return to China to invest, you can't guarantee 100% profit. He wants to earn a little more, to leave a little more wealth for his children, so that they will not be as bitter as we are.
I finally decided to return to Africa because I have been here for more than ten years, I know how difficult life is in Africa, and I want to tell my husband that no matter how hard and tired I will be with him, but I hope that our family can be reunited as soon as possible.
In 2021, I bought a house in Putian and spent more than a million yuan on the down payment. Good villains feel that they have gained something, although it is not much, but they are all obtained by their own efforts. With a mortgage, I don't dare to give up the income in Africa, and I feel a lot of pressure every day. I don't have any culture, I don't have any craftsmanship, and I started from scratch in China, and I don't know if I can find a salary of five thousand yuan a month.
My husband and I have a record of settling accounts.
One day I was chatting with my husband, calculating the current monthly expenses, and I was shocked after the calculation. On the African side, the shop rent is about 8,000 yuan, the employee salary is 3,000, the housing is 1,200, the water and electricity bill is 500, and the food bill is 1,000, for a total of 13,700. In China, the mortgage has to be repaid 13600 per month, 25 years, I give my mother-in-law 3000 per month, my mother-in-law helps us take our son and daughter, my son's childcare fee is 1500, and the monthly purchase of things for them adds up to 500, not counting my daughter's tuition and clothes. Roughly calculate about 32300 yuan.
After calculating this number, I was very uneasy, afraid that one day I would not have this income. Incomes are now barely balanced. The thought of a mortgage with 25 years to go, and the days to come in Africa, feels like it's a long way off. But if I leave Africa and go back home, I don't know where to get the money to cover those expenses.
Malawi roadside.
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Life in Malawi, though bitter, is not all-for-all.
For me, this is a "only in and out" place, the money I earn here, there is no place to spend, there is no shopping space, we are not used to eating outside restaurants, I grow my own dishes, cook my own food, a month of food expenses are very small, basically can save.
Now The local economy in Malawi is also a little better than it was a decade ago, and there were no cars on the road before, but now it is actually stuck in traffic.
In Africa for more than a decade, only they know the sweet and sour. Our parents also want us to go back soon, partly because of the epidemic, on the other hand, business in Africa is really not as good as it used to be, and profits are not so objective. Every time we say that we will last a few more years, and then we will go back after a few more years, and then we feel that China is far away from us, as if it is a hometown that cannot go back.
I installed a surveillance in my home in China, and when I thought about my children, I often went to see what they were doing. I can also talk to them on video and teach them to do homework.
In May of this year, when my son turned 10 and couldn't spend his birthday with him, I prepared a box of delicious food for him (left).
I've been doing self-media recently, hoping to gain more on this road. In order to better understand the local customs, I hired a local girl who can say Chinese, 20 years old, called Wanto. Wanto's father died when she was three years old, and grew up as a welfare dean in Chinese, and I knew more about Chinese culture and customs, so I taught her to grow vegetables and teach her to shoot videos, hoping that even if she left this job in the future, she would be able to rely on herself.
If I could go back to more than a decade ago, I would never have chosen to come to Africa because there are so many unknowns. After coming here for so many years, I was particularly homesick and thinking about my parents, and then I had a child, and I put my child in China, and I couldn't see my child for two or three years, which was very sad.
I plan to return to China next year when the house in the mainland is handed over, and then go back to China to try the outlet of self-media, if my self-media can do it at that time, I want to stay in China with children, call my husband home, I don't want my family to be separated.
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#Selfie My Story #Selfie My Story [This group of graphics is exclusively released in today's headlines, and it is strictly forbidden to reprint] The above is the real experience shared by @Jiaying's mother overseas. This is also the true story of the 312th issue told by the selfie. If you also want to tell your own story, please send a "private message" to tell the "selfie".