#44 Wealth and Poverty; What is Enough?

WEALTH AND POVERTY; WHAT IS ENOUGH?

When you travel from the richest country in the Americas to one of the
poorest, the issue of wealth and poverty cannot be avoided. Yet in a way,
they are very relative terms.

Take my experience last month in Nicaragua. I stayed in a quiet
neighborhood in a mid-sized city. Streets were cleaned and trash was
collected. You could count on regular morning delivery of newspapers, milk
and fuel. There were convenient corner stores, the outdoor market had a
great supply of fruits and vegetables, and the supermarket was within
walking distance. Inexpensive taxis and cheaper public transportation were
easily available. Our house had electricity, a stove and refrigerator,
bathroom and laundry as well as ample living and sleeping space, all
surrounding a lovely patio full of flowering trees, where you could always
find shade, and often a breeze. Computer access was convenient and cheap.
People worked and went to school, laughed and played, and hung out with
family and friends. It was safe to be out at night. All in all, it was a
very livable city.

From the perspective of North American wealth, however, it was an impossible
place. Public transportation was a fleet of decrepit school buses,
cast-offs from the US, and microbuses into which people were shoehorned till
there was barely space to breathe. Many families’ means of transportation
was a bicycle—-carrying two, and often three, people.

Our stove was a two-burner table top affair, but gas was expensive and beans
got cooked in big batches over a fire in the corner of the patio; a man
pulling a load of wood up the street was the source of fuel. You had to
bring a pitcher out to the man with a bucket on his bicycle to get your
milk. Fast food came from a corner of your neighbor’s living room, and our
diet was a variation on beans and rice.

The toilets couldn’t handle toilet paper, and the water ran only
erratically, sometimes only an hour or two before 6:00 in the morning.
Clothes were washed on a concrete washboard and hung out to dry. You had to
go to a cybercafe to check your e-mail. Work was hard to come by, signs of
poverty everywhere. The heat was incredible. Being out in the sun was
exhausting and air conditioning was nonexistent. There was no escape from
the dust.

It would be good for this city to have more wealth. The schools are in
desperate need of resources and the cost of uniforms and supplies is a
barrier for many families. The public health system is under-funded. They
could use a good public library, more amenities by the lake, a movie
theater. More jobs and more income would help, so men didn’t have to pull
heavy carts from the farms into market, up and down the street, so parents
could ensure the basic health and well-being of their children. Maybe they
could even increase the public shade.

But, at its heart, this city works. It doesn’t need to be transformed to a
western model to be a good place to live. And the fact that it does work
calls into question some of our assumptions about the good life.

Are washing machines and twenty-four hour running water necessary for our
well-being? Are we deprived without video games and an infinite choice in
food products? Is it so bad to spend free time in the evening sitting out
on the step with our neighbors? Do we all need our own cars and computers
and air-conditioning to survive? If these people can manage without air
conditioning, then anyone can! Alternatively, if it’s a necessity for a
good life, then logically, they need it too, and we’ll have to be willing to
share out the world’s fuel for everyone.

As we move toward the end of the cheap fossil fuel era, our wealthy country
is going to face increasingly hard choices. We may need to study the models
of livable neighborhoods and communities in poor countries as we consider
how to retool our lives. Perhaps what we have to give up will turn out to
be excess--stuff we never really needed in the first place.



Pamela Haines
May, 2006


Some things that have given me hope recently:

Friendly and welcoming rural Nicaraguan families.

The sale of Philadelphia's newspapers from a profit-focused absentee
conglomerate to a group of local investors who love the city.

Three young men who went to Darfur for an adventure and came home
permanently, energetically and creatively committed to the children of
northern Uganda.

Prisoners who start vegetable seeds to be raised by urban gardeners to feed
the hungry.



My Nicaragua travel letter:
I went to Nicaragua to help our son Tim decide whether to take a job
with the house-building/workcamp program he's been helping out with. They
offered him a job starting a new site, near the same city he is now, working
closely with this US woman, Bonnie, whom he counts on and admires so much.
But he didn’t want to make a wrong choice and isolate himself from life up
here, so he asked if I would come down and take a look at the whole
situation and help him decide. What a pleasure! (I couldn't have decided
to go just for a vacation--it felt like an expensive luxury--so it was great
to have it be part of my job as a mom.)
Of course there’s way too much to tell... The first morning he rode me
out to the house-building worksite on his bike—-on dusty roads way out into
the country. I was surprised at how easy it was to balance on the bar, but
very conscious of how much extra work it was for him.
These people in the little rural community of Los Lopes that he’s been
helping to build houses for were so warm and open, and it was such a treat
to have access to their lives through their friendship with him. They’re
real people: Rafaela, Juan, Luisa, Andrea, Temporita, Ervin... It was
hard to be around people who had so little that one sickness or loss could
send them over the edge—-hard to have so much in that context. I also
became very aware of the difference between the young men Tim’s been
supporting, who have been surrounded by violence and drugs, crime and
dysfunction, and these hardworking, generally functional families. It makes
it seem all the more important to halt the migration from the countryside to
big city slums.
So I lived for a week in an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an
ordinary mid-sized city, spending a lot of time doing what ordinary
Nicaraguans do. What a gift! I struggled with the heat, and wished for
more soft places to put my body (cushioned furniture and rugs are
impractical because of all the dry-season dust—-thank goodness for
hammocks). But I was proud of the time I was the first one up and checked
to see if there was running water, ready to fill the barrels in case there’d
be no more water till evening (or 36 hours later, as happened one time).
And after I’d washed my clothes at the concrete tub/washboard that is part
of every house, I felt like I’d passed a rite of initiation. It was an
experience trying all different kinds of food, walking around the city in
the cool of the evening with everybody’s living room spilled out onto the
street, being at the market, squeezing into public transportation. One time
we climbed into the back of a bus, standing amid crowds and big bags of rice
and I thought, “All we need now are the chickens”—-and I looked down and
there they were. So many stories I could tell...
We spent a lot of time with our informally-adopted son Chino. I got to
watch him paint a picture that I then took home to sell (he’s good!) and see
the art class he’s offering to neighborhood children, and have intense
conversations about religion. I have a bigger, fuller picture of who he is
now, which I think well serve me well in the future (and it’s clear that
we’ll be in each others’ lives forever).
And what a pleasure to be with Tim! We had long talks, and he ended up
deciding to offer to work for them for one year, starting in December, and
spend the fall between home and Grammy in Kutztown, with a goal of looking
for leads for meaningful work up here, so it doesn’t seem like Nicaragua is
his only choice on into the future. I’m so proud of him I could bust.
It was good to get a better picture of Bridges (the group he’ll be
working for), to join the house-building process, spend time with Bonnie,
sort donations, get a sense of their accomplishments and conflicts. What a
challenge to be the interface between the richest and (almost) poorest
countries of the Americas—-a microcosm of the opportunities and pitfalls in
redistributing wealth. I came home recommitted to playing what role I can
in creating a global order that works for everyone.
So, the visit was just right. And I spent my whole day on the trip home
writing articles (on the city, on Bonnie, on the people in Los Lopes, on
Tim), which helped to ease the transition and make it more than just an
exotic interlude in my wealthy North American life.