Mapping the war on poverty

Having spent the majority of my adult life on African soil, trips back to the US are full of both nostalgia and contradiction. Visiting my mother’s workplace in the Bronx is one of the most dramatic of these contradictions.

The Bronx is the poorest urban county in the US, even including middle class neighborhoods like Riverdale. The public school where my mother works is just a few short blocks from what was at one point named the most dangerous block in New York. And yet as I drive to pick her up, I can’t help but notice solid brick apartment buildings (some with more charm than others) and clean streets with minimal graffiti. There are no garbage piles or street children begging by the side of the road. The kids walking past look well-dressed and well-fed.

But poverty in America isn’t about bellies bloated with stage 2 malnutrition. It’s about kids who grow up with at least one parent or close relative in prison, kids who are not hungry but survive undernourished on processed foods with no vegetables in sight. They go to a school where the janitor sleeps overnight for fear of being on the streets after dark. Just as children in the Malawian bush can’t imagine the development in Lilongwe, these kids have never seen a cow and don’t know that the bread they eat comes from wheat growing in the rich Midwestern earth. There are check cashing (at high interest) outlets on each corner and Popeye’s fast food where a supermarket might have been.

American poverty is buried under bright new sneakers and digital cable, hidden behind access to credit and fancy cellphones, when in reality, it’s the lack of the cultural capitol needed (like knowing someone who’s attended and completed college) and strong social supports that hinders people from finding a path to the American dream.

While many of the residents of this neighborhood are African, this isn’t Africa. It’s not one of the poorest countries ranked at the bottom of the human development index. Poverty alleviation doesn’t have to be about those living thousands of miles away any more than those living thousands of miles away are all poor. Each corner of the planet is filled with contradiction. Finding a way of out poverty is just as complicated.

The Face of a Dollar a Day

Since I was little, Sally Struthers has been asking us to sponsor a child somewhere in the world who is living on less than a dollar a day. I’ve been working in Africa for the better part of the last ten years and have become accustomed to what I see in the village -where most African still live- that once made me stop and think. Six year olds taking care of two-year olds. Kids running around with swollen bellies full of parasites and orange-tinged hair – a sure sign of malnutrition.

In the countryside after the rains, the fields are full of green green crops and overripe mangoes lie rotting on the ground, and I can’t help but wonder how people here can be so poor. The soil is volcanic and fertile. But it’s malaria season, flooding has brought cholera to the surface, and bridges to health centers have washed away only to be rebuilt after an interminable period of time.

Here in Malawi, 133 of every 1000 children born dies before they turn 5. Amazingly, this figure is down from 189 deaths in 2000. Forty-six percent of children are stunted from malnutrition, and only 64% make it through enough school to considered be literate. Over half of Malawians live on less than a dollar a day.

I was in the bush last weekend, face to face with a young man speaking decent English with a good head on his shoulders. He has 2 small children, his wife has passed away. His salary comes out to a bit over a dollar a day, making him just slightly better off than many others in the village. But averaged across his small family of 3, he and his little boy and girl are each living on about 35 cents a day. Even if his kids don’t go to bed hungry, any extra cost -a minibus ride to the health center, a few secondhand clothes- will seriously set them back.

Progress is made slowly, but today out of each thousand born, 56 more children than at the beginning of the decade make it to their 5th birthday. Each step, however small a stride in keeping those most vulnerable alive, is bringing us closer to a world in which a child can grow up to earn more than a dollar a day.