Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

Today, October 15, is the second annual Blog Action Day. A day when thousands of bloggers, podcasters and videocasters all come together to talk about the same issue on the same day world wide. Blogging for the good of the world if you will.

The 11 Moms are participating today, each of us in our own way. Many have pledged donations or affiliate advertising income to charities that deal with world poverty. Walmart is matching this, dollar for dollar. I encourage you to visit all of the 11 Moms sites today and make a difference.

I personally am pledging 10 cents per visitor to my site today, and 25 cents per new subscriber (my starting count is 722). That money, and the matching funds from Walmart , will be donated to Project Peanut Butter, a charity that addresses malnourished children in Malawi and Seirra Leone. These countries have a high rate of poverty and a 70% rate of pediatric malnutrition. Project Peanut Butter provides a high protein, lipid-dense paste, rich in nutrients, for an in-home, multi-week feeding therapy that resulted in an up to 95% recovery rate for participating children.

In college I participated in the most amazing traveling/learning experience, a 3 month long program called Semester at Sea. We lived for the duration on a ship, and traveled to Japan, China, Tiawan, Malaysia, Ukraine, Russia, India, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and Morocco. We took classes on the ship and did unique field trips when in dock. The emphasis was in interacting not as a tourist, but rather to try to understand the lives and cultures of the countries we were guests in.

It is not understating it to say that the experience truly shaped my life.

There are so many memories from that experience that I could relate to the topic of poverty. The crowded masses of humanity in Shanghai & Beijing. The stark contrast between the luxury 5 start hotels in Penang Malaysia and the corrogated tin shacks just a short ferry ride away on the twisted dirty streets of the mainland near Kuala Lumpur. The cheerless squat concrete building of Krasnoyarsk Sibera. The apprentice stonemasons, no more than 10 years old, at Mahabalipuram India, wearing only a loincloth that showed all too clearly the outline of their ribs as they blew dirt and debris away from their work. Village markets in the hills of rural Morocco where children begged as the bus stopped and stooped old women carried heavy loads. Grinding poverty. Dirty faces. Disease. The list goes on and on-the memories still vivid despite the passing of over 15 years. . .

In some ways it’s easy to ignore. You look the other way on the street, up at the beautiful architecture, across at the scenery. You don’t have to feel it, live it. You can compartmentalize it away from the rest of the experience and try to forget it.

Until I met Nishwath.

She was a college student involved in the youth Rotary there in Madras India. We met with a large group of student and she and I hit it off, well enough that after the first day two friends and I blew off the rest of the stuffy prearranged programs and spent the day with her family.

Nish (as she liked to be called) was the daughter of a veterinarian. Apparently he did quite well-she spoke of how he had been promoted to the point of being administration rather than working with the animals-something he missed.

She was college educated and was starting to work on her masters-a problem she noted because Indian boys didn’t like to marry women with a higher education than they had, and many of them went to college and started working immediately in higher paying tech jobs. I remember being shocked when she said that in a couple of years, if she hadn’t met a nice boy, she would ask her parents to arrange a marriage for her. “I don’t know why everyone thinks you have to fall in love and then get married” she calmly stated “Why can’t you get married and then fall in love”.

She had a younger brother who was thirteen.

They were a solid middle class family, maybe even what would be considered “upper” middle class. She was proud of her father and their place in society, pointing out that they were landowners-the house was theirs and they rented the upstairs apartment out. They HAD A TELEVISION!

So when I got to their house, it was a shock. Six rooms, all concrete block with poured concrete floors. The furniture was well worn and mismatched and looked like hand me downs-if I had been stateside I would have assumed they were castoffs from when a family member had “updated” their old set.

The kitchen was a concrete counter with a spigot and drain for the sink. There was no stove or refridgerator, just a hot plate that the mother did all of the cooking on and some bags of chapatis flour on the floor and bottles of spices neatly lined against the wall.

In the bathroom the toilet was a hole in the floor. There was a sink for handwashing and a garden hose style spigot half way up the wall (with a matching drain on the floor) to use for bathing.

The family was open and generous with us, obviously excited to have visitors. They said in the past they had never hosted the Rotary guests because they felt too humble (mostly the rich hosted students*), but that after our visit they would be offering more frequently. The mother cooked us a splendid dinner “early” (about 7pm) and insisted we eat without them. It was Ramadan and they would not be eating until after dusk. We politely complied, following the local custom of eating with our right hands while we chatted and shared.

We were asked to spend the night-an honor and privilege. It was a real chance to get to know the family and the culture in a way most tourists never do.

Usually Nish and her brother shared the bed in his room-although they each had their own room, there was only the one bed. So my friend Barry, as the male was automatically given the to share with the brother. We two girls made pallets of blankets and slept right on the cement floor with Nish in her room.

It was a fascinating visit, one that I am extremely thankful to have experienced. I will never forget it. The truth was driven home for me, made real in a way no textbook or passing glance on the street could. Here they were, an upper middle class family, thankfully living in conditions that were more humble than most of the poor in America.

I can’t even imagine how those who were truly poverty stricken lived.

I am grateful, in a way that is hard for someone who has not experienced otherwise to understand, for the prosperity of our country. And I feel, really feel for those who live otherwise. I know my pity and sympathy don’t change anything, can’t make things right. I give where I can give. I remember. And I give thanks.

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