Poverty, development, other stuff

Living in a university town is very interesting. One can always find a way to engage in the academic endeavour. Yesterday I attended a seminar where the speaker’s task was to talk about the construct of poverty, something that is very close to my heart. Earlier in the day I shared with a friend the pain of knowing that millions of girls around the world drop out of school because the sanitation services fails them. It brings to mind my own early years of school sanitation – a misnomer really in our case. Two stalls for girls in a school of more than 700 children, cemented to the ground with no paper and a tap where we had to drink water and wash our hands. It is a miracle we survived. I think I still have the habit of trying not to use the loo because it was better to wait until we got home. There I only had to share it with about 20 people. No wonder that I am always worried about clean toilets and washing my hands all the time!

Back to poverty… the discussion ended largely on whether the way we determine if people are poor or not is valid or not. The old Human Development Index. The Indicators with which to measure if we are making progress in fighting poverty and if people are able to claw their way out of poverty. How long is it before they slip back or can they be rid of the worry forever? Millions of books have been written. Hundreds of journals give scholars the chance to debate the issues and billions of dollars are being spent on interventions to lift the poor from their dismal state, yet we are told that in most countries the gap between rich and poor is widening. Maybe broadening the indicators, finding the qualitative richness of the un-measured elements of our lives like measuring happiness and shame will give us more hope for the future. I’m not too sure. I’m tired of talking and would like to see more action, which can in turn breed more action. Am I an idealistic dreamer? Maybe not, we as a family managed to move from poverty to a better life.

They don’t know how

They don’t know how
To meet the needs
Of the masses
Who sit in ashes
Dirty water
Piles of shit
Through their greed
Declaring them unfit
To meet the needs
Of the working, unemployed
Not by the bickering overjoyed

They don’t know how
To go to the ground
Empowering women and children
To take control
To chase away the hunger
The heat and the cold
Fighting disease
Making choices
As they please
Instead of following
The collective majority
Where to piss and eat
Always on the sidelines
Suffering neglect
Poverty's defeat

They don’t know how
To do the simplest things
There are no expectations
That the interventions
Should be charitable acts
Locals know
Where their reality is at
Is it lost
Despite
A constitutional pact

They don’t know how
Pretending
Not to see
The history of nations
Telling us
It is only against our own
That we turn
When we choose
To only follow them
Who is not brave
To say
It is more than just
The raw power we crave
When through the lack of basic needs
Missed by “pro-poor” interventions
Finding our early grave
The poor will remain
From meaningful development depraved

By Simone Naik, in response to David writing about diarrheal outbreak in Mpumalanga Province South Africa in the wake of new leadership elections for the African National Congress, 20/12/07