The question of ‘what is poverty’ is one that I have thought about a lot whilst in Africa. On one hand, the lack of wealth of the two countries I spent time in seems to be directly correlated to their names starting with the letter ‘M’. Coincidence? Definitely. More importantly, the poverty is loud on the surface level appearance of villages and cities – the city roads all have potholes, the sidewalks are as consistent as the big contract decisions the Cubs make (consistently bad that is), and the streets periodically smell like urine and/or feces. It’s even more apparent in villages where you can tell the relative wealth of people in a community by the materials used for their houses:
- - Bricks
- - Concrete blocks
- - Mud bricks
- - Weaved reeds filled with rocks (think of the game Connect 4 – the blue ‘holder’ is the reed mesh, the chips are the rocks)
- - Reed huts
But do these deficiencies truly represent what is lacking? The cliché goes, the people in the street seem to be happier than those in developed countries. There are always smiles about, roaring laughter, games, people say hello to everyone, men and women walk around holding hands, holding arms; it’s refreshing. Do rolling power cuts in cities, or no power at all in villages, represent poverty?
While I wouldn’t be able to give a comprehensive list of what ‘poverty’ consists of (could anybody?) a few
points have stuck out to me during my four and half months working in development in Africa.
- Sanitation. The level is astounding. In some communities I visited, people had only just learned to use a latrine; to wash their hands afterward defecating and before eating; to clean wounds; to go to the hospital if someone is sick. The idea of a ‘drying rack’ for dishes was new – before, the plates were either not washed, or if they were they were left in the dirt until they were used again. On Mozambique Island there is a lack of toilet facilities, so certain streets are completely covered in human excrement.
- Health. The statistics are devastating – life expectancy (depending on the stat) varies from 40 to 45 years old. Almost half of the population is under 18. In parts of Mozambique, the HIV rate is as high as 20% - which is good compared to countries like Botswana and Swaziland. Malaria and cholera during natural disasters routinely kill people. Malnutrition means that entire districts will suffer from stunted growth.
- Food security. In my first week in Malawi, I was told by a Peace Corps volunteer that in her area the rains had been ‘bad’ (come at the wrong time or not come at all) and that people would die of starvation. That was a fact that the community acknowledged. This situation is not uncommon.
- Education. This is definitively an aspect of poverty, but I find it hard to quantify. The reason being that education deemed necessary in developed countries is, in many cases I believe, a misplaced notion when applied to developing countries. Why should ‘literacy’ necessarily be a determining factor of education? In some communities in Mozambique, there is no use for Portuguese, and the local language isn’t written. In some communities, education regarding farming practices, and learning different techniques to deal with natural disasters might be more important. Don’t get me wrong – one of the defining characteristics of poverty is the lack of education; I’m just not sure the traditional methods of measuring its level or its impact are always appropriate.
- Family planning/population growth. One of the greatest challenges for families is feeding every member. This is, ironically (and devastatingly) worsened by development – parents used to have 6 or 7 children, with the expectation that 1 or 2 would die before they were adults and could help take care of the parents, meaning that parents would ‘only’ have to provide for 4 or 5 children. With better pre-natal care, better access to vaccinations, increased awareness of nutrition etc, infant mortality rates have dropped. The extra mouth or two mouths to feed means less food for everyone in general, increased likelihood that children will be kept from going to school, etc. Family planning is struggling to take hold in many communities. The main reasons are that men often see the number of children as a sign of virility; fear of family planning methods (for instance, in one community I visited, the women believed that if a woman took birth control, then stopped, then had a child, that that woman would die; in another community, it was believed that any birth control made a woman permanently sterile); and difficulty of access to family planning techniques.
- Climate change. I spent most of my time with Save the Children working in their climate-change related projects. The poorest of the world are the most susceptible to climate shocks such as earthquakes, floods and droughts. Whether or not you believe in global warming (I can’t believe I have to add that caveat – go GOP!) increasing the poor’s adaptive capacity to climate shocks – that is, the ability with which the poor can change their practices to adapt to increased droughts, or floods etc – is imperative as climate-related disasters devastate communities and countries. The floods in Mozambique in 2000/2001 ruined the country’s already fragile economy – not to mention killed thousands of people.
As I mentioned, this is not a comprehensive list, and these points aren’t exactly groundbreaking. However, the reality of how low a level of development is achieved by many communities, in these fields, gives some perspective on what development maybe should concentrate on. For me, concentrating on economic projects such as micro-loans and community organizing schemes seem to doomed to limited success from the start because of all the lacking conditions of stable, healthy society in the first place. Though these schemes have their value and their place, they should be part of a holistic approach targeting specific communities and areas.
Like I said, this is nothing groundbreaking, but seeing this in the flesh is different to reading about it – you all will just have to go to Moz to get the real impression!
Thanks for reading!
