by Aleta Kazadi

Created on: December 18, 2009

Poverty is a condition.  It is a condition that blocks us from moving ahead.  For many of us we have been poor and do not stay poor.  There are those for whom poverty is a jail cell blocking them to move forward and for others it is a simple inconvenience.

 I grew up poor.  When I was little the IRS called my parents in more than one time deciding they were cheating on their taxes because, as the IRS said, no one could live on so little as my parents claimed.  They claimed what was true, but because they were resourceful and because they were determined neither they nor we their children stayed poor for long.  There are lots of success stories like mine.  There are other stories where people start poor, stay poor and die poor.  The big question is why?

 The problem of poverty is the same here where I live in the RD Congo as in the US. I know a family who had been displaced for some rather tough situations, and in the process of the displacement they were forced to live in a house probably not even 10 by 10-six of them. The house was the size of a half of a railroad car. While there their eldest daughter died, they had a really tough time, but now two years later they are starting to make a come back. Some of their neighbors even think they are well off. Why? At the same time there are others who accept their plight and make no effort. These are people that stay poor and are the same ones who think you should help them out.

Poverty has nothing to do with your bank account. It is such a difficult thing. One time I wanted my class to be grateful for all the things they had, things they took for granted—material things. I showed them a picture of Haiti where children ran around barefoot, the houses looked like tin cans. After the movie I asked the children what were their impressions. To my shock, the children replied that the children in the film running around with tattered clothes and bare feet—to them those children looked happy. It took me some time to realize what they were saying. The children in my class had better clothes than I did, but what they noted was the joy in the faces of the Haitian children because so many of my students felt alone, they lived in broken homes and homes filled with quarelling..

I live in a place where there is no road traffic, only foot traffic, the water is carried on people's heads and most of their houses look like little metal boxes. It was in this setting that

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