The face(s) of poverty
Those of you who know me or read this blog, will know that I don’t spend an awful lot of time dwelling on the bleakness of poverty. I do my best to reduce it through my work and my life here, and I certainly think a lot about it, but I rarely give poverty a face by elaborating its most real (and bitter) features.
Truthfully, this is partly because I often fail to see them. Poverty is harder to recognize than you might think, especially when its troops here have such incredibly big smiles on their faces. It’s also hard to see because it’s not so straightforward. No one thing makes someone poor, and sometimes those who may seem the poorest actually enjoy a better quality of life than people with a higher income. For instance, when I go to the village and see tidy mud huts surrounded by lush green rice paddies and people eating mangoes off the trees, I find it hard to be concerned with whether or not they earn more or less than $1 a day. Urban poverty, on the other hand, I find much darker and more discouraging, even though the urban poor often enjoy greater access to resources and opportunities (as scarce as they may be) than the rural poor…
What you see is not always what you get, and it’s not possible (or at least not recommendable) to judge either on how they appear. Poverty can be determined not only by your income but by by your access to services, your ability to make decisions for yourself, your level of security, your place in society… It can be very deceiving and it would take a lifetime here to truly understand.
The other thing about poverty is that it’s easy to tune out. In fact, to some extent, it’s ‘necessary’. If I didn’t numb myself to a certain degree while living here, I may never leave my house. And so whole years can go by in which poverty is just a puzzle, a technical issue to be solved during office hours.
But every once in a while that shell breaks. Or at least mine does. The first time it broke was after more than one and a half years in Bangladesh. I was in Jamalpur visiting Village Savings and Loan Associations and in one of the villages I went to I met a boy name Shomel. He became the first person to make me cry for Bangladesh because he was both the sweetest and sickest boy I had met. I saw death approaching for the first time and seemed both unjust and unwarranted...
The next time I cried was for Hena. I was traveling for work when I found out from my flat mate that she had been beaten by her husband (again) and had temporarily left home. I think its probably clear by now how much I love Hena, and so I’m sure it’s no surprise that I spent the 1.5 hour bus ride between Jessore and Khulna weeping for my inability to take her out of the terrible reality she faces every day, with that incredible smile of hers.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was investigating the sanitation situation in the slums of Mymensingh in preparation for the study we are carrying out at the moment (that will have to wait for another blog) and I met Ayronessa, an elderly woman living in a bamboo and plastic shack next to the Brahmaputra river. When I meet poor people who are young or middle aged, I have some hope that things might change for them; but there is no hope for elderly people here. They just don’t have any options, or anywhere to turn (which is why people pump out babies with as much enthusiasm as we invest in RRSPs). Ayronessa came and sat next to me and held my hand while she explained that she was alone, that her only daughter had died, and that she had no income and thus no means of sustaining herself. She also happened to have the most incredible clear green eyes; they pierced straight through whatever remained of my shell and left me in tears.
And last week, I met Abdul Aziz, in his small bamboo and tin house in the village outside of Mymensingh where he lives with his wife. They had no kids, and thus no ‘pension’. He was so weak he could not leave his bed, and so I sat next to him while he held my hand, not knowing who I was because he could not see. Old age was most likely the main reason for Abdul Aziz’s weak, emaciated state, but he also had not eaten for a number of days. As he asked me to pray for his death, he explained that the pain he was suffering was mostly the pain of hunger.
I contemplated the absence of a social and legal system that would allow the elderly to live out their lives in a dignified way (an aside: Abdul had actually been given a Vulnerable Group Feeding card by the government, but was required to travel 6km to collect the cash benefits he could use to feed himself... an impossible not to mention costly endeavor for a man in his state), and then did the only thing I could think of: bought him enough rice, dhal and cooking oil for a week. It felt ineffective, inadequate and unsustainable, which it was. But at the same time, I needed to make a gesture that would reconnect me with poverty on a personal level. I needed to reclaim the humanity that is so easily misplaced when approaching poverty from a professional perspective. I never want addressing poverty to be just a job, and yet when I spend all day dealing with poverty it’s easy to want to ignore the rest of the time.
For the last week, I’ve spent a lot of time translating what I spend into how much food it would buy for Abdul Aziz. That new sari I bought for Bengali New Year: 1 week. My upcoming trip to Malaysia: 2 years… I tell myself, and so do those around me, that I don’t have to be so hard on myself. That at some point I have to let myself live my life without always thinking about how it relates to those less fortunate than me. I instinctively agree, and pack my bags for a mental holiday from poverty. But I recently dared to ask myself why it is that I think I deserve this? Why is it that I feel I have the right to escape from the reality that I’m not doing as much as I could to help people, that there are people suffering all around me and that their poverty is incomprehensibly yet undeniably correlated with my wealth? They don’t get to take a mental break from thinking about their poverty, so why should I…? I still haven’t figured out how to balance these opposing forces. Clearly it is difficult if not impossible to live the life I know if I constantly doubt the incredible privileges I was born with… And I’m clearly not ready to give up the life I know… So maybe the answer, for the moment, is just to think about it more. To take fewer mental holidays and choose to face more often the astounding levels of poverty that I am fortunate enough not to have to experience. And, clearly, part of the answer is also to do more, to help more often, to get in the habit of addressing poverty in whatever way seems most appropriate, to make it seem like less of a sacrifice, or even a privelege, and more of a daily routine. Perhaps then it will become easier to face and to change the vast inequalities of the world I live in…
Fortunately, the pretext that brought me to Abdul Aziz’s house was a much cheerier one: I was in my colleague Azad’s father’s village to see the school and clinic he is building for his community. Our walk around his village was a bit like a tour of the destitute: sick children, women abandoned by their husbands, people with no food to eat… And yet, the silver lining was that they had Azad, a person who is totally dedicated to improving the well being of everyone in his village, who takes no mental holidays from poverty, who owns only two pairs of pants because he knows full well where that money can go and what it can achieve. Most importantly, Azad has a vision for his village, and it doesn’t involve TVs, cars and exorbitant wealth. He is one of the few people I have met in Bangladesh, and in the developing world in general, who has a vision for his country that does not look like some version of North America or Europe. He believes in figuring out what is best for Bangladesh and in his mind that involves leveraging the country’s incredible agricultural potential and in educating its human resources. He believes so strongly in these two things that he is both building a school and planning to return to his village in the next few years to become a farmer and prove that it can be done in a way that can create happy, healthy villages that are more than places of poverty and sources of urban migration.
It was a long day in this beautiful, hospitable, and very poor country. But then days like the one I spent in Azad's village remind me what life is really all about. So I’m thankful, both for the reminder and for having enough to eat.
Truthfully, this is partly because I often fail to see them. Poverty is harder to recognize than you might think, especially when its troops here have such incredibly big smiles on their faces. It’s also hard to see because it’s not so straightforward. No one thing makes someone poor, and sometimes those who may seem the poorest actually enjoy a better quality of life than people with a higher income. For instance, when I go to the village and see tidy mud huts surrounded by lush green rice paddies and people eating mangoes off the trees, I find it hard to be concerned with whether or not they earn more or less than $1 a day. Urban poverty, on the other hand, I find much darker and more discouraging, even though the urban poor often enjoy greater access to resources and opportunities (as scarce as they may be) than the rural poor…
What you see is not always what you get, and it’s not possible (or at least not recommendable) to judge either on how they appear. Poverty can be determined not only by your income but by by your access to services, your ability to make decisions for yourself, your level of security, your place in society… It can be very deceiving and it would take a lifetime here to truly understand.
The other thing about poverty is that it’s easy to tune out. In fact, to some extent, it’s ‘necessary’. If I didn’t numb myself to a certain degree while living here, I may never leave my house. And so whole years can go by in which poverty is just a puzzle, a technical issue to be solved during office hours.
But every once in a while that shell breaks. Or at least mine does. The first time it broke was after more than one and a half years in Bangladesh. I was in Jamalpur visiting Village Savings and Loan Associations and in one of the villages I went to I met a boy name Shomel. He became the first person to make me cry for Bangladesh because he was both the sweetest and sickest boy I had met. I saw death approaching for the first time and seemed both unjust and unwarranted...
The next time I cried was for Hena. I was traveling for work when I found out from my flat mate that she had been beaten by her husband (again) and had temporarily left home. I think its probably clear by now how much I love Hena, and so I’m sure it’s no surprise that I spent the 1.5 hour bus ride between Jessore and Khulna weeping for my inability to take her out of the terrible reality she faces every day, with that incredible smile of hers.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was investigating the sanitation situation in the slums of Mymensingh in preparation for the study we are carrying out at the moment (that will have to wait for another blog) and I met Ayronessa, an elderly woman living in a bamboo and plastic shack next to the Brahmaputra river. When I meet poor people who are young or middle aged, I have some hope that things might change for them; but there is no hope for elderly people here. They just don’t have any options, or anywhere to turn (which is why people pump out babies with as much enthusiasm as we invest in RRSPs). Ayronessa came and sat next to me and held my hand while she explained that she was alone, that her only daughter had died, and that she had no income and thus no means of sustaining herself. She also happened to have the most incredible clear green eyes; they pierced straight through whatever remained of my shell and left me in tears.
And last week, I met Abdul Aziz, in his small bamboo and tin house in the village outside of Mymensingh where he lives with his wife. They had no kids, and thus no ‘pension’. He was so weak he could not leave his bed, and so I sat next to him while he held my hand, not knowing who I was because he could not see. Old age was most likely the main reason for Abdul Aziz’s weak, emaciated state, but he also had not eaten for a number of days. As he asked me to pray for his death, he explained that the pain he was suffering was mostly the pain of hunger.
I contemplated the absence of a social and legal system that would allow the elderly to live out their lives in a dignified way (an aside: Abdul had actually been given a Vulnerable Group Feeding card by the government, but was required to travel 6km to collect the cash benefits he could use to feed himself... an impossible not to mention costly endeavor for a man in his state), and then did the only thing I could think of: bought him enough rice, dhal and cooking oil for a week. It felt ineffective, inadequate and unsustainable, which it was. But at the same time, I needed to make a gesture that would reconnect me with poverty on a personal level. I needed to reclaim the humanity that is so easily misplaced when approaching poverty from a professional perspective. I never want addressing poverty to be just a job, and yet when I spend all day dealing with poverty it’s easy to want to ignore the rest of the time.
For the last week, I’ve spent a lot of time translating what I spend into how much food it would buy for Abdul Aziz. That new sari I bought for Bengali New Year: 1 week. My upcoming trip to Malaysia: 2 years… I tell myself, and so do those around me, that I don’t have to be so hard on myself. That at some point I have to let myself live my life without always thinking about how it relates to those less fortunate than me. I instinctively agree, and pack my bags for a mental holiday from poverty. But I recently dared to ask myself why it is that I think I deserve this? Why is it that I feel I have the right to escape from the reality that I’m not doing as much as I could to help people, that there are people suffering all around me and that their poverty is incomprehensibly yet undeniably correlated with my wealth? They don’t get to take a mental break from thinking about their poverty, so why should I…? I still haven’t figured out how to balance these opposing forces. Clearly it is difficult if not impossible to live the life I know if I constantly doubt the incredible privileges I was born with… And I’m clearly not ready to give up the life I know… So maybe the answer, for the moment, is just to think about it more. To take fewer mental holidays and choose to face more often the astounding levels of poverty that I am fortunate enough not to have to experience. And, clearly, part of the answer is also to do more, to help more often, to get in the habit of addressing poverty in whatever way seems most appropriate, to make it seem like less of a sacrifice, or even a privelege, and more of a daily routine. Perhaps then it will become easier to face and to change the vast inequalities of the world I live in…
Fortunately, the pretext that brought me to Abdul Aziz’s house was a much cheerier one: I was in my colleague Azad’s father’s village to see the school and clinic he is building for his community. Our walk around his village was a bit like a tour of the destitute: sick children, women abandoned by their husbands, people with no food to eat… And yet, the silver lining was that they had Azad, a person who is totally dedicated to improving the well being of everyone in his village, who takes no mental holidays from poverty, who owns only two pairs of pants because he knows full well where that money can go and what it can achieve. Most importantly, Azad has a vision for his village, and it doesn’t involve TVs, cars and exorbitant wealth. He is one of the few people I have met in Bangladesh, and in the developing world in general, who has a vision for his country that does not look like some version of North America or Europe. He believes in figuring out what is best for Bangladesh and in his mind that involves leveraging the country’s incredible agricultural potential and in educating its human resources. He believes so strongly in these two things that he is both building a school and planning to return to his village in the next few years to become a farmer and prove that it can be done in a way that can create happy, healthy villages that are more than places of poverty and sources of urban migration.
It was a long day in this beautiful, hospitable, and very poor country. But then days like the one I spent in Azad's village remind me what life is really all about. So I’m thankful, both for the reminder and for having enough to eat.
posted by ash at 3:27 AM
4 Comments:
Ash,
I enjoyed your post. As you contemplate the amount you spend on your trip to Malaysia in units of food that could otherwise be directed to a less fortunate individual that you have met, think about what this trip to Malaysia does for you as an individual to educate you, broaden your life's experiences, and to simply invigorate you and or recharge your batteries. Just because you will likely enjoy the trip, doesn't negate the fact that it will help create more ability and/or capacity to help others who are less fortunate at some time in the future - either directly or indirectly. Put another way, think about the time you have spent in Bangladesh, and the cost for you to travel there. Would the world have been better off if you had never visited Bangladesh but had instead simply given the money spent traveling there to those in need? Would you have had the level of empathy, understanding and desire to do what you have done and are likely to do in the future? Libby is right, don't be so hard on yourself. Continue to be compasionate and to do what you are doing when it seems most appropriate. You can't fix the whole world by yourself! If you let these feelings of "guilt" for having more and/or doing things that make you happy, overwhelm you, you will lose your capacity to function in ways that will truly benefit these groups and individuals that you clearly care so much about. Pace yourself, as if your journey through life is a race. You do not want to run too hard too early, or you will not have enough energy to finish the race. Make sure you have enough to get to that finish line, and when you eventually have it in sight, only then should you expend your remaining resources to "kick-in" to the finish. You aren't close enough to even see the finish line at this point.
Happy Travels!
Rhinochaser
Beautifully written Ash
I know it sounds ironic but reading that has lightened my days as it has returned me back to the slums.
Problems here in Aus are so small on the global scale of things.
x
I found my way here via a link and wanted to say thank you for you words and heartwrenching images. For many years I worked in the county medical system, but it took such a toll. Now I work with a nonprofit home health agency and see mostly the elderly. Their issues are not as dire but they are unseen in this nation. It is good to be reminded.
Good piece of writing. I am a Bangladeshi who is now in US for graduate studying.
What you have written is really appreciable. These type of thoughts from a western person is laudable because to eradicate poverty we need a complete overhaul of the global economic system that only gives more money to the rich. Eighty percent of today's wealth is in the hand of white people, who is only 16 percent of the population. Isn't this an imbalance?
Again, what Rhinochaser said in the first comment is very disappointing. The world now needs much more active participation from the developed world rather than just donation. Donation can never end poverty, development can. To ensure development, we need participation and assistant of all the people of the world, like Ash has done. Until you can feel and experience poverty, you are not likely to be eager to fight it.
Thanks
Ashik
Lubbock, TX
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