I Don't Remember Being Poor

I remember being scared to go to church. I remember feeling guilty. I remember the smells and I remember the houses made of tin and plastic. I remember sitting outside in the sun and my pale white skin becoming more contrasted from those who sat around me. I turned red while everyone else got darker. Or, at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I remember those Sundays sitting for hours in church in Kibera.

Ten years later I was halfway around the world, and I remember having a similar feeling. This time without the fear--but the guilt was the same. I should have known better by now and maybe the feelings were connected. Or, maybe this time as I walked through downtown Seattle and saw a line of people circling a block I should have known why I was feeling such guilt. But I didn't. The people waiting in that line that circled one whole block of downtown Seattle were forming a line for a soup kitchen and I now realize I felt guilty because I believed that I couldn't do anything about it. Conveniently for me both in Kibera and in Seattle, I got to go home afterwards.

I actually used to live in the rough part of Nairobi called Eastleigh for about 8 years, which is on the other side of town from the slums of Kibera. They say that guns were smuggled through Eastleigh, and you could buy one for 500 shillings; it's no wonder it was called Little Mogadishu. The funny thing about Eastleigh, Kibera and most anywhere in Kenya is that people were so happy and so generous. I can't say the same for the line circling downtown Seattle. Not that people were mean. More that it seemed they had had a hard life, a real hard life.

I had a really good discussion with a few friends this past weekend about poverty and whether it is relative or if the poorer you are, the more poverty you're in. This seems like an easy argument. Obviously the less money you have, the more poverty you're in. While this tends to be true I think there is a point of contention here. What about social capital?

For example, I remember when I was young in the early eighties and my family was poor. But when I say I was poor I mean we ate soup for dinner and never had any money because my dad was out of work. We certainly were below the poverty line but I don't know if we were in poverty. Actually, I would argue that we were not in poverty; we had friends at our church who made sure that we were doing all right. Eventually my dad got a job through my uncle to work in Kenya as a director of a Bible school. We had social capital.

But this is not just relegated to the United States. I remember in Kenya people would always ask my parents for money to help send a child to school or go to the doctor. My parents eventually became upset and felt as if everyone was taking advantage of them. Yet after we lived in Kenya longer we realized that, rather, we were perceived to have resources and thus, were expected to share them. It was not just us who were asked for money but students at my dad's school had families who they were expected to send money to. It was a system of social capital and it was expected if you had excess that you should be willing to give.

This article is not intended to argue that there is not poverty nor that people who are poor do not need help because their social capital should or will benefit them. Rather I am arguing two things. First, that we should not assume that everyone in "Africa" or those who live elsewhere are all in poverty and those here can't be in poverty. It's not that poverty does not exist; it does here as well as in places such as Africa. Second, that the guilt I felt from Kibera and Seattle is a result of the poverty that in many ways comes from a lack of relationships that build social capital. This can happen to people anywhere in the world, and we all have part in it; however, we can all build social capital as well by caring for others.

This week I look forward to the activities around Poverty Awareness and the opportunity to learn and share with others. But mostly I look forward to the opportunity to find ways to challenge a system that reduces social capital. This can happen in a plethora of ways but certainly one way is a system that subsidizes large business and does not require those businesses to provide a livable wage for their employees. I hope we at EMU can get behind a growing movement here in the United States that is demanding a livable wage for all people. I hope we can also get behind the ONE campaign that is calling for "fair trade, debt relief, fighting corruption and directing additional resources for basic needs: education, health, clean water, food, and care for orphans" as a step to end systematic poverty (http://www.one.org). I hope one day we will all see poverty become history.

Contact jon at jon.helfers@emu.edu