There are a few things on which I must reflect, or ruminate, before I go any further with this blog.
Writing/Blogging…I am writing this blog to share and inform; connect people to information, ideas, problems, and solutions; and to invite comments, questions, and criticism. Writing this blog took some serious convincing and urging from friends, and I admit, I experience some serious inner tension both about what I write, and how I write it. So, who am I writing this for, or who will be reading this? I’m partially writing for myself, simply to process and to write. Some who read this are very educated and very experienced friends and colleagues of mine, many of whom have tremendously more experience than I in issues such as global health, economic development, and working in resource poor settings and developing countries. Other readers may have no such experience, and for whom I hope this blog can be a window, albeit a very small one, into the gross inequalities that exist in the world today. Still others will fall somewhere between these two groups, all with different backgrounds, viewpoints, and frames of reference in which they will process, interpret, and create meaning out of what I write. I was advised by a very excellent professor and treasured mentor of mine, that a I have to “earn the right to give my analysis and meaning through the ethos of my writing.” So the best I can do is provide a realistic description of what I see, hear, and experience, and attempt to create a picture of life or situations in Malawi and Kenya as respectfully, concretely, and richly as I can.
Generalizations… I received a wonderful and challenging email from a friend that spurred me to think harder about what it means to generalize… in this case, to generalize about “Africa.” Africa is a continent, and certainly, there are vast differences between, say, northern and sub-Saharan Africa, western and eastern Africa, Kenya and Malawi, even Nairobi, Lilongwe, Blantyre, Eldoret, and Naitiri. What’s more, several of my dear friends are African, and I agonize over the fact that I, a westerner, am often writing about the struggles and challenges facing their continent, as if I know something. I too, worry that generalizing, for example using “Africa” to refer either, to the situation of a specific country, city or village, or to the situation of extreme poverty in the developing world as a whole, “is reductionistic to the complexities” of these situations, and has “simplified the issues of poverty and structural violence into a single catch-all where in fact they have numerous manifestations, each requiring a tailored solution.” Generalizations can at times, simplify and belittle, but I also think they can have the power to unify and uplift. So instead of using the term “Africa” to speak of Malawi or Kenya, Blantyre or Eldoret, maybe I ought to go the other way and just use the terms “world” or “earth”???
Poverty… Is it ethical to compare settings of extreme poverty? A year ago, the ethics of this question never even entered my mind, and in fact, I was quick to compare. I had lived for a little while in a rural village in Kenya, and then later had worked in the urban slums, so thought I had a basis for comparison. In the rural areas, I saw people eek out an existence on subsistence farming, on which their families often could not subsist; I saw people miles away from access to markets, health care, and information. In the urban areas, I saw mothers caring for their own children, and their sister’s orphaned children, on unskilled, casual labor that rarely provided a daily income enough to feed their children, or pay for school uniforms; I saw families literally sleeping on floors turned to mud by the rainy season, unable to afford mattresses or new roofs to keep out the rain; I saw children living with no place to play, amid cramped and insanitary living conditions. But when a family is living on less than a dollar a day (the current definition of ‘extreme poverty’) how can we say that one is worse or better than the other? How can the rural poor be worse, or better off, than the urban poor? Hunger is hunger. Unclean water is dirty, disease-causing water. No access to, or money for, health care is sickness, not health. Lack of education simply leaves one uneducated, uninformed, and powerless. The list goes on… but could there possibly be a value assigned to whether or not this poverty existed in a rural area or an urban one? Or in Malawi, Kenya, Africa, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, or south-east Asia for that matter?
While there are many ways in which to be very rich, there are only a few in which to be very poor.
Thank you for reading.
If you’re in the mood for something a bit lighter, have a look at these Ruminations for a guaranteed out-loud laugh. (’sup Rome! thanks for putting me onto this guy years back… hilarious)
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