Knowing the real POVERTY

farida (45)in #life • 6 years ago

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://africanleadership.co.uk/united-nations-un-in-deal-to-fight-global-poverty/&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwintui9mobdAhVGPBoKHfwnAAQQwW4IGSgAMAc&usg=AOvVaw3U4v9NVKiVDi-AxGNFHprx
Poverty! Can anyone who has not really been poor know what poverty is? I really doubt it. How can anyone who enjoys three square meals a day explain what poverty means?
Indeed, can someone who has two full meals a day claim to know poverty? Perhaps one begin's to grasp the real meaning of poverty when one struggles really hard to have one miserable meal in twenty-four hours. Poverty and hunger are siblings.
If you are wearing a suit, or a complete traditional attire, and you look naturally rotund in your apparel, you cannot understand what poverty entails. Nor can you have a true feel of poverty if you have some good shirts and pairs of trousers, nevermind that all these are casual wears. Indeed, if you can change from one dress into another, and these are all you can boast of, you are not really poor. A person begins to have a true feel of what poverty is when, apart from the tattered clothes on his body, he doesn't have any other, not even a calico sheet to keep away the cold at night.
Let us face it, how can anyone who has never slept outside in the open, appreciate the full harsh import of homelessness? Yet that is what real, naked poverty is. He who cannot lay claim to a house, however humble, cannot claim to be poor. Indeed, if he can afford to rent a flat, or a room in the town or city without the landlord having cause to reject him, he cannot honestly claim to be poor The real poor man has no roof over his head, and this is why you find him under a bridge, in a tent or the vast open air.
But that is hardly all. The poor man faces the world as a homeless dog. In every bargain, every discussion, every event involving him and others, the poor man is constantly reminded of his failure in life. No body listens attentively when he makes a point, nobody accepts that his opinion merit's consideration. So in most cases, he learns to accept that he has neither wisdom nor opinion.
The pauper's lot naturally rubs off on his child who is subject not only to hunger of the body but also of the mind. The pauper lack's the resources to send his child to school. And even in communities where education is free, the pauper's child still faces an uphill task because the hunger of the body impedes the proper nourishment of the mind. Denied access to modern communication media, the poor child has very little opportunity to understand the concepts taught him.
His mind is a rocky soil on which the teacher's seeds cannot easily germinate. Thus embattled at home and then at school, the pauper's child soon has very little option but to drop out of school.
That is still not all. Weakened by hunger, embattled by cold and exposure to the elements, feeding on poor water and poor food, the pauper is an easy target for diseases. This is precisely why the poorest countries have the shortest life expectations while the longest life expectations are recorded among the richest countries. Poverty is really a disease that shortens life!