Generosity and Poverty (Synonyms, right?)

Dear Readers,


This blog entry will be part letter to all of you part regular blog entry.


First of all, I owe all my regular readers, family, friends and colleagues an apology for my long absence from this major communication outlet which I hoped would help me stay connected to everyone. Unfortunately, I have allowed myself to become absorbed in the day-to-day routine, distracted by the stresses of my job here and caught by the fear that what I may write, may not be good enough. Fortunately, in recent weeks I have been doing a lot better and after some encouragement from my family and friends, I have decided to recommit to the goal of one blog entry per week. Last week was supposed to be the first week but just when the blog entry was being pushed down on the To Do list, I received a gentle reminder and am now writing to all of you.


I want to thank all of you who are reading this post for continuing to check my blog and for having faith that I will return despite my absence. I hereby re-commit to the one post per week goal (with pictures now too)


Yours,


Reynaldo


 
Generosity and Poverty (Synonyms, right?)

Having much to talk about, I hereby begin with the most important personal realization I have had over the past months. I just spontaneously came up with the title because I want to talk about the family that I have been living with for the past 3 months and about the curious combination of juxtaposed adjectives that come to mind when trying to describe them: generosity, poverty, cold, warmth, hunger, hard working.


When I first moved at the beginning of April, I was under the assumption, that while the family was definitely not the richest, they were managing quite well. The compound, was well-kept, the rooms clean and clean, the food tasty, the people smiling and my host-mother, sister and brother, being incredibly welcoming. Added to this was the novelty of taking baths under the open sky in a garden, eating food with the hands, helping and observing things around the house which were all strange and foreign to me. There were occasional hiccups in this image such as when one girl told me that her stomach was paining because her mother had not cooked food. Going on the positive assumption that perhaps her mother was perhaps too occupied with other chores to cook on that day, I moved on. On a different occasion, I also noticed that my sister (young girl maybe 10 years old) always had a bandage on her one leg and when I asked her about it one day, she replied something in Kassem. It wasn't until much later that she removed the bandage and let me see what was a significant indention in the flesh of the muscle which apparently she has had for several years and which is not healing. She mentioned that she saw the doctor but apparently the diagnosis had not turned up anything.

In hindsight, these indications seem to clearly indicate the poverty among my family and the relatives around. 

However, I did not pick up on these clues at the time. It was not until about one month ago when I was having my breakfast and overheard a conversation between my host-mother and my sister which I guessed was about money (given my limited command of the local language, Kasem). Fortunately, a girl from a nearby house was there who speaks excellent English and I asked her what the conversation was about. She then informed me that my sister was asking my host-mother for money to buy lunch at school. I innocently asked why, and learned that it was because my host-mother could not afford to pay the 50 pesewas that her daughter needed to pay for the food at school for one month. Dumbfounded, I continued to probe and discovered that not only could my host-mother not afford to pay the 1 cedi to pay for lunch for both children for one month, but before I had arrived, the family had only eaten every second day. Since I had been there, I had been served plenty of food in the morning and evening that was prepared by my host-mother and another sister. While I had been generously giving gifts in the form of food mostly to contribute back to both, I realized then and there that all my gifts were essentially useless because the shortage of funds was so severe. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and a bit lost. I had been living in an illusion of apparent wealth for over 2 months that had been made possibly by the family using all their food stores to feed me a meal every day to make sure I was not hungry and doing everything to make sure I was ok. This stark juxtaposition of such poverty and such generosity really surprised and moved me deeply. I immediately gave them the 1 cedi to pay for the food and made a plan to contribute back in more useful ways to the family than buying food.


Ever since that day, I have looked at the family with different eyes and have been much more observant of the things around me. While this process has been very insightful and definitely tumultuous, the consequences for me have also been very significant. I realized how incredibly rich I was with my stipend here which allows me to maintain a motorcycle, eat good food, buy telephone credit regularly and give gifts to the family. These things are all normal to me but completely beyond reach for my family and most of our neighbours. For me, a trip to the nearby town of Paga (which is 5 km away) is only a maximum 15 minute motorcycle ride whereas for my mother, it is probably at least a 45 minute walk. For me, buying a meal for 2 cedis every day is completely affordable whereas my mother could not afford to spend 1 cedi to buy lunch for her two children. Eating meat or fruits to me is a necessity because I know that the body needs protein and fresh produce to stay healthy. For my family, eating meat and fruits are a rare luxury. For me, when I am cold or when a shirt is torn, I simply go to the store and buy a new one. For my family, they are often quite cold at night now. I have already given away one of my hoodies to my mother but this is where the interesting question comes in, who do you help and can you help everyone? Of course, the answer to that is: no you cannot help everyone because even when I look beyond my immediate family's compound, the problem becomes bigger and in the scale of the village, impossible for me to solve on my own.


One colleague illustrated this dilemma quite well in a story. Imagine that one morning you were driving your car along the river and you happened to see a baby drowing in the river. Of course, anyone would slam the brakes, dive in the river and save the child. If the same situation happened the next morning, probably the reaction would be the same. However, if it occurred day after day or the number of children became too many to save all at the same time, saving the children becomes impossible and the question then becomes, why is this happening, what is the root cause. This is what I have come to realize over the past few months and even though the challenges remain, it now becomes easier to see how my work with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is hopefully helping to alleviate some of these problems in the long-term. 


As I now finish with this blog post, I am getting ready to ride my moto home to my family where I know, I will be received warmly, will feel completely safe, secure and like part of the family. It's been a good day and I feel very grateful for the opportunity of being here.


This image shows my mother Abapa, my small sister Alice with the blue-yellow dress and a girl from another part of the compound called Ama having breakfast and drinking tea. Missing in this picture is my brother Kuesi.