Poverty

It is Blog Action Day 2008, and this year's theme is poverty. Now sometimes I think, what do I really know about poverty? And then I remember that (1) this is something that affects all of us and (2) not to long ago I was living in a country that was ranked in the bottom five of the world. Right now Guinea seems a long way away from my current life in Turkey, but I know that my experience there not only opened up my eyes but also changed how I look at the world. So I'll share a few observations.

Often times the reason that people live in poverty is something that is almost beyond their control. Relocation due to war, being born in a country where it takes 18 hours a day to cultivate enough food to exist on, a lack of infrastructure and incorruptible public officials. Despite all this, do not ever think that this means that these people are somehow worse than you. Often times they are putting in more energy into subsisting then you would ever dream of putting into your job. I had students who would get up early to go draw water for the family, cook breakfast, wake up their siblings and get them ready for the day only then could they think about getting ready for school. After 4 hours in class they returned home to fix lunch/dinner for the family (very time consuming when your tools are 1 knife, 2 pots and a wood fire), go to the market, take care of the siblings, clean the house, wash the clothes, and just maybe get to their homework. All of this had to be done before the sun set, as there was no electricity and candles were to expensive to use. The only light came from the moon on a clear evening. And some of them were only 12. They were doing all of this for the chance to possible get out of the village and be the first to go to college. I must emphasis chance, because in my two years in Koundara at most 4 of the 70 students who graduated earned places at a university. Why were youth responsible for all of this? Because parents needed to be working full time all day in order to earn enough to buy food, or in order to grow enough to feed the family. Times were not easy. Yet these individuals always had a smile and could find joy in their life. Cooking became a game. Families sat and talked once the sun set. Poor, perhaps. To be pitied, definitely not.

As I finished up my two years in the Peace Corps in Guinea I realized that I was leaving a country that I had actually seen go more downhill in the years I was there. Things were not improving in the country. The price or rice, and thus the cost of feeding a family, was increasing. Roads got worse. Fewer students were managing to stay in school through the end of high school. What to do? As a teacher I firmly believe that education is the key, and I don't necessarily mean the education you get in school. This is why I trained a group of my students to talk to others in their villages about how to avoid contracting HIV/AIDS. Why I lend money to struggling entrepreneurs through Kiva (a microlending company). It's not enough to give things away, no, we must help people to learn how to improve their own lives. When they have responsibility for it, then that is when the true changes can occur. The sad thing is that even though I watched Guinea deteriorate it has gone up in the rankings. How misleading is this? What it really means is that now there are just more countries,and thus populations, that are in a worse situation then Guinea. We need to do what we can to address this.