A Definition of Poverty
Let me start on an honest note. I do not have a definition of poverty. But I recall as a primary school student, dreading the approach of “Break-Time”. How I wished the dreadful break-time would be skipped out of our time-table. For me, break-time was really broke-time as I salivated at the sight of my classmates doing justice to their break-time meal. Rice, Pottage, Beans and fried plantain were being wolfed down all around me, while I played a reluctant, hungry and sole audience.
Honestly, I have no definition of poverty but I recall once, having to walk barefooted on newly tarred, hell-hot road on my way home from school. As you read this, I can still feel the sting of the sun on my head and neck, while the man-made road baked my tender soles. I recall on my way home from school hoping and praying that for once my father would “remember” to leave some money for me to buy lunch with.
Truth be told, I can’t define poverty, the dumb-skull that I am. But I remember soaking handful of garri for 3 hours. I remember also, shoving the soggy product of my starvation-induced desperate 3-hour long experiment down my reluctant throat.
Honestly, I lack the intellectual capacity and spiritual depth required to define poverty. But I remember, as a newly matriculated student, going to the university with nothing but a pair of discarded moccasin shoes rescued from the neighborhood dunghill. I remember as an undergraduate, polishing hand-me-down suede black trainers with charcoal. Such creativity!
Really, I lack what it takes to define poverty. But I recall, as a university student, dreading the approach of semester examinations because I was never sure if the university would make good its threat to debar those who had not paid their school fees to sit for the exams. I distinctly remember the ordeal of having my submitted examination script being torn to shreds in my presence for non-payment of my school fees.
Honestly, I can’t define poverty, but I do recall waking up one day as a university student and not being able to see only to be discovered that I was not going blind, but was only exhibiting symptoms consistent with eating nothing but soaked garri for days. I recall as a university student, having to trek a distance as far as Gbongan to Ikire (Igando to LASU).
True to God, you will agree with me that I can’t define poverty, but this I can say, I have an idea of what God meant when he said: My strength is made perfect in weakness.
Poverty results in two kinds of behavior. The first kind, despair, leads to evermore poverty and usually, early death from deprivation of one type or another. The second kind, ambition, like you had, forces one to try to find a way out of that condition and improve one's life. Merely by making it to the university, in spite of your struggle and deprivation, was a way out of poverty.
So much of Africa is locked in poverty. The political and economic system that creates wealth has always relied on poverty as a way of "using" the poor to gain more and more riches. From experience, we know that communism doesn't work, especially when it is taken over by thugs who benefit from people who become dependent on the state for their livelihood. Only well-regulated democracy can raise people out of poverty, providing equal opportunity for all. Unfortunately, here in the United States, certain wealthy interests have been quietly removing the regulation that controls wealth and more and more Americans are going hungry, shoeless, and homeless every year.
You are a good example of how education works. Educated people have fewer children to feed because they focus on ideas and solutions to their problems instead of having children to help them eke out a bare existence. Education helps people avoid making mistakes that destroy their food and water supplies, make them unhealthy, and take them out of despair.
I do not understand the food you are describing, but it does not sound nutritious or tasty. Thank you so much for giving us a taste of what real poverty is.
Ron