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I live from pay-check to pay-check which, in my mind, classifies me as poor (not rich). Yet, I do not go to sleep with hunger pangs as my companion. Here I sit at my personal computer writing an article which I am able to do due to education and income.

My domestic worker (now please remember that I am poor!) cannot read what I am writing and is amazed at how words appear on the screen as I touch the keyboard. To explain to her that I will submit this article via the Internet and that, hopefully, many people from all around the world will read it and so on, is almost impossible due to her lack of education. Her name is Paulina and she is poorer than me! I live in a seaside apartment and she lives in a room at a municipal hostel. The most astonishing fact is that when it comes to matters of the heart and issues of life, we are quite equal. In fact, it astounds me at how much I learn from her views on living life in general.

A few days ago she was telling me about the plight of one who has nowhere to live and no food to eat and no means of acquiring the funds to lighten their desperate situation. As I stand on my balcony looking at the rolling waves coming in and going out to sea I realize that I am actually quite rich and that she is poor and the homeless one is living in extreme poverty. Then I decide to visit my neighbor. Now, my neighbor lives in the penthouse. The penthouse is beautiful. I will dream tonight of living in such splendor! Towards the end of the month I will borrow a few Rand from her to see me through to my next pay-check. She has thousands and thousands of Rand in her bank account. The question races through my mind; if I am rich, what does that make her? A millionaire?

With all these thoughts running around my mind, I bring myself back to visiting my neighbor. She is telling me about a magazine article she had read about a certain millionaire's home. The article was accompanied by photographs of his house. Wow, seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, two kitchens and a garden that would impress Bill Gates! By this time, my shoulders are hunched by carrying the weight of the idea of how much money he must have in his bank account to be able to afford his magnificent lifestyle.

My cell phone rings, it is my sister who has recently returned home after a tour around the neighboring township. Actually it is not really a township, but an informal settlement. She was shocked at the filth and living conditions of those people. They don't have running water, not to mention the lack of electricity and worst of all they don't even have toilets! So now I think of our local homeless people. They use public amenities and are guided by the street lights at night whilst they rummage through dustbins in search of the means to make it through to tomorrow'. At least they have dustbins to check, whilst those in the informal settlements don't even have dustbins since they don't have anything to discard.

The time has arrived when my hubby gets home from his day's work and we will eat dinner early tonight because at 20h00 we will be plunged into darkness due to our second round of daily load shedding! Again my mind will race around this daily inconvenience. If there is not enough electricity for those of us blessed enough to own electricity generated items, how will this country ever reach the stage where each and every resident will know the luxury of pressing a light switch?

I am not a politician and I don't know much about politics either, but I have to confess that I don't know the difference between poverty and inequality. The question is, is there a difference?

Learn more about this author, Priscilla Shearer.
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