"The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination."
-Alan Watts
At first, the idea of
starting a company, selling a line of gourmet African hot sauces, and using the
profits as an engine for fun, change and development was something I'd been
toying with on and off for over four years. The idea popped into my mind occasionally,
peering out here and there like a mischievous elf whenever my mind wandered,
which was often due to a mild case of A.D.D. The idea originally came to me in
2008 after leaving Malawi, and my wife-to-be, whom I thought I may never see again.
I flew back to America with bottles of the hot sauce in my luggage. Everyone loved it! I searched online. No one was selling it here. And there were a
bunch of former aid workers online asking where to buy it.
But I wasn’t ready then. I
had a rendezvous with my lady love. I made the arrangements and told everyone,
laboriously, one-by-one or in small groups that yes I was leaving...again, to
meet up with a Belgian girl I had known for only three months, to fly off and
live with her in South Korea, and teach English there for at least a year. It
turned out to be two. More on all that later…
So if I found this great
product no one is selling here and I have an in, why not keep all the profits
for myself? Why the charitable angle? It’s personal. But since you came all the
way to my blog, I’ll share with you. Just you. We struggled when I was small. My parents divorced when I was six. My younger sister was three-and-a-half.
Before my mom remarried, she had a hard time finding a job. She worked at a day
care center, and sold towels and other items at flea markets. We wore
secondhand clothes and sometimes, as she told me later, she went to bed hungry
so that we wouldn't have to.
I remember as a child learning in school about how smoking was bad. When I came home that day, I went to where
my mom hid her cigarettes. I knew where they were. I tore them all up and threw them in the garbage.
When she found out, she screamed so fiercely at me, but later on hugged me,
apologized and cried. It must have been the pressure and the anxiety. My family’s
fortunes have waxed and waned over the years. But I never wanted for clothes,
though I never had those Air Jordans. But I never
wanted them. I just didn’t care about those things. We always ate well. I never saw
the signs of our struggles. Just heard about them, like hearing about a war
being fought far off in another country.
I saw poverty growing up, more overt and less hidden. I had friends from the “ghetto.” I saw them and their families mistakes, their triumphs and struggles. I learned that you have fewer options when you’re
poor. You have to work harder and have a lot less time. It puts untold pressure on
families. Children see few options for escape. They don’t believe in
themselves. The parents struggle and their kids don’t feel like they can do better.
They make the same mistakes as their predecessors thinking that this is their
life--becoming a parent too young, dropping out of school--that
they can’t escape. And mistakes that people in much better financial circumstances
shrug off like the loss of a job, the dying of a car or a substance abuse problem, end up devastating the poverty stricken in America, who don’t often
recover.
But poor people in
America, by and large, have TVs. Some have cars. They have access to food,
shelter, transportation, education and medical care, albeit substandard in many
cases. But I never saw poverty like I saw in Malawi. 90% of the people are
subsistence farmers. They eat enzima. This is a wet corn meal, kind of like grits
or cream of wheat, rolled into balls and eaten with “relish” maybe some beans
or little bits of meat or vegetables. They eat this for two, or if they are
fortunate, three meals a day, every day for their entire lives with little
deviation. Maybe if they are lucky they get a little chicken for Christmas. Enzima
is just empty calories. It has little nutritional value.
Most poor people in
America have rooms, furniture and possessions. Most families in Malawi live in one room huts
with dirt floors and thatched roofs, with little furniture or possessions. Many
times the houses are made by their occupants by hand, from bricks baked in the
sun. In rainy season, often families have to rebuild as the bricks get eaten away by torrential rain. No TV or internet, most people have a radio and now more and more, cell phones. No car but
maybe a bicycle. I've seen kids play soccer barefoot, or two sharing a pair of sneakers, each wearing a shoe on their dominant foot.
Little or no transportation out of
the village. They live their entire lives within its boundaries and the
surrounding countryside. Forget medical care. Education is available but
limited. Often it’s too burdensome for children to walk the mile or two to
school, and for many on an empty stomach. Schools have few resources. I visited
a school in a rural village with no desks or chairs! 50 to 100 students sat on
the floor at a time. They had a chalk board. Other than that, the room was
empty. And due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the country is flooded with orphans who
are most times taken in by relatives that can hardly support their own kids.
These children often have to drop out of elementary school and work to help support the
family.
After Africa, I spent
two years in Asia. Then my wife and I spent a month in Europe visiting my in-laws. Finally, I returned to America. I taught G.E.D. English and social
studies for Passaic YouthBuild for one year. I saw the grim face of American poverty
there, in students who signed up to get their G.E.D.s, in their struggles, in
how they felt about themselves, their futures, their communities, in the
depression, fear, anxiety, angst and hopelessness.
I saw poverty creep like
a specter into all the decisions folks shouldn’t make so young, and in the lack
of someone there for them to care for them or guide them. I saw teens, regular people wear faces of strength like masks to hide homelessness, to
hide ambiguity about gang affiliation, to hide the fear and trauma of
being beaten or stabbed or shot. I saw them follow the lines written for them, if they wanted to play or not, in the need for revenge that
sparks a cycle of hideousness with no end, and I witnessed the push and
pull struggles of living between loyalty to their homies and the need to build
a better future for themselves. So I care about the face of poverty in America,
and not just in the inner city though that is where my experience lies.
The people in Malawi
affected me most. Not only because of the severity of their poverty but in the
enormity of their spirit. They were carefree, lively and filled with a
childlike joy. They sang, danced, waved and smiled all the time. Malawians live
day-to-day and don't seem to have a care in the world, without any of our
modern conveniences, with poverty and death hanging over them like a storm cloud,
with little support system save friends, family and community, they seemed to
be the happiest people on earth.
Back home where we have every modern convenience, ample support systems, the latest technology, people grumble through their lives. It doesn't make sense. So I think
we need a cultural exchange. America needs to refocus, reconnect, stop being so
pointlessly busy, build a new sense of community, do something important
besides self-aggrandizement, and in the end, find our center.
If we could somehow
exchange our strengths, America’s and Malawi’s, reinvigorate each society with
the positive aspects of the other, we could see each society grow and prosper
in new and unimaginable ways. I still believe, as our enlightened predecessors
did, that all the problems of the human condition can be ameliorated with new
ideas, new approaches, steadfast wills, brilliant minds and goodwill in our
hearts. There are enough resources to feed, clothe, educate and take care of
every human being on this planet. Ours is a distribution problem. And it is ours, all of ours. Yours and mine. We all belong to that one family, the human race.
I think fun,
adventure, curiosity, altruism, and a can-do attitude can light a fire of
change to ignite the world, one planet and one unified movement. More to come…
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