On the nightshift

The calmness, the convenience, and the comfort of a night’s life draw a decent person’s attention into a reality. But, why are people afraid of changing their ways of life, thinking and attitudes?
In most of the materially advanced nations, the nights are not only known for what we usually refer to as night-life, which simply means the pursuit of pleasure in casino entertainments, dining, wining, dancing and that what follows, but, also for what is behind them all, the pursuit of one’s trade.
During my early short school years abroad, particularly, in the United States of America, I had a few friends who used to earn their livelihood and pay their tuition fees by working during the nights, engaged in any odd jobs. So, for a European, an American, a Japanese or a Chinese, work by night is not a new thing, it is part of the industrialization process. If people in the West think today to reduce the weekly working hours to 35 or so hours, that is simply a result of the degree or level of their industrialization, more than a language of election.
Night work can reduce the frustration and tension of the day’s hectic life. It may also give a calm moment to ponder deeply, and above all, it may help labour-intensive tasks to be accomplished in cool breathe of the night, rather than under the heat of the scorching day. Undertakings such as cleaning and wiping of big factories, offices, shops, etc. are usually performed during the night hours in the developed countries. Street cleaning, washing of squares, and the watering of greeneries are also managed during the nights or early mornings.
In effect, such a work that is managed in the nights or early mornings will help to create directly or indirectly new employment opportunities. As a result, there will take place increased transportation service, as well as increased manufacturing of diversified and appropriate wearing gears to fit the nights’ or early mornings’ climatic conditions.
Although night work is not so popular with the urban population, the Ethiopian farmer is not generally a stranger to hard work as she or he normally starts at the chilling morning of the day. In effect, life in the peasantry can neatly provide a practical school of hard work to the urban dweller.
The Ethiopian farmer goes to his field bear-footed at the dawn of day by carrying the ploughshare and leading his bulls to the farm. Rain or cold, it matters little for that person. Urban life is much different from what is being seen in places like our capital city. The street cleaners are seen dusting the ground at a square time when the office workers are rushing to catch taxies. They mercilessly blow the dust on the pedestrians that are rushing to their work places, or on the motorists who are held at traffic lights. Garbage collecting vehicles are not any better. They litter the cleaned up streets despite the nominally placed protective nets, exposing the clearers for another round of work and a headache at that, and another round of blow of dust on the unfortunate pedestrians who will suffer two or three days later from a kind of flue with a curs on the cleaners spirally.
But, the question is, why all this mess in just one bright late morning, when we have all the possibility under our thumbs to take alternative night approaches to finish our odd jobs?
I think, this should give us enough knowledge to make a sharp turn toward the feeling of becoming a task-oriented people able to maintain sustainable work mentality. But, we can neither deny our ability to carry out some of the menial jobs and basic undertakings in the early hours of day rather than at rush hours when everybody runs to office.
If we will be able to take such actions, there is no doubt that our streets will be safer for health and easier for the free flow of vehicles. The street cleaners cannot come into collusion with the reckless drivers nor should they become an issue of discipline, since it is really unbecoming to clean streets at inappropriate timing by blowing health hazard dust on immaculately dressed up pedestrian office workers, let alone the many diplomats and other residents that hasten to close their car windows for fear of penetrating dusts while being caught under traffic lights. If decision makers think in the same way as I do, our country will surely be in the right way of development; if not, there will always be a way to find another path or approach to change our attitude to work.