Prevalence of Poverty

 

On Monday I am awaked before 6am by the sound of crashing thunder and the heavy thwacks of rain on the tin roof of my apartment building. The storms are coming more often these days. Sometimes we get 2 or 3 in a day. On Tuesday the later in the day storm offers some relief in the heat. It is still warm for me.

My co-workers bundle in their heavier coats. Sometimes I see people in the community wearing heavy "winter" coats here when the temperatures dip into the low 90s or high 80s. People ask me if I am cold. I laugh usually. I have rarely been cold since coming to South Sudan. I think the only time I am cold is when I have the AC on and I am tired. Even then you won't find me with longs sleeves on. The only times I have worn long sleeves is when I am trying to hid from the swarms of mosquitos.

I am endlessly blessed here. Now, don't get me wrong, I still complain of things and miss the comforts and luxuries of life back in the US. But I also acknowledge there is a certain beauty and joy in living without so many material possessions. There are things that I would like from home, like a pair of shorts, and an Incentive Spirometer for a patient of mine, but most of the “things" of life at home I miss less than I thought I would. I miss food from home. And of course, my family and friends there. And my dog too! But I have all that I realistically need here, and more because I have things like easy access to internet, electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and my AC.

But out in the community we come face to face with real poverty. I have seen poverty in the US.  I have seen the tent cities that are nestled in different bigger cities, like in D.C. But, despite that certainly being poverty, it does not prepare you for the poverty that we experience and see here. Poverty here is so different than what it is in the US. We have soup kitchens and programs that help provide housing and food and food stamps and other things to our communities at home. No this does not mean that this isn't poverty, but the poverty here is so different.

With how spread-out communities are, lack of technology, lack of access to roads, money, food, or transportation poverty takes on a whole new level. People dress in rags, some dirty, others clean but faded through due to so many washings. People are thin and struggle to make enough to feed themselves or their children. In the bigger villages like Yambio or Nzara poverty looks different than it does in the bush. In these larger villages there are ways for people to access services of NGOs to get some needs met.

In the bush that is different. Access to anything you don't produce with your own hands is limited. Trucks that show up with supplies at seemingly random times impacts the access someone might have to things like a mosquito net, which is essential in trying to slowdown and prevent the spread of malaria. The clinics for healthcare are few and far between. Many women deliver babies at home because they do not have easy access to a facility to do it safely there.

Some of the bush communities, and villages in general, have boreholes thanks to NGOs. Hopefully these work and their women, children, and sometimes men, pump the water they will use to cook, clean, and bathe with. Lots of pumping, and carrying of jugs of water happen. Hopefully the community has a working borehole, or the water used is dirty and often contaminated. The water in the boreholes certainly isn't to the level of clean in the US but that water helps prevent infections, sickness, and death that come from drinking the water in streams and puddles here.

Homes are different here too. It is not uncommon for the floor of a home to be a packed dirt. The walls made of homemade bricks fired in homemade kilns near the site of the home. One room homes that will shelter from the weather, animals, and other people. The compounds families live in are open and have different buildings on them like outdoor wash areas for showering and outdoor bathrooms. There is no running water. Then there are cook houses where meals are made on charcoal and wood fires. People who have more money have better floors, steel doors, ceramic bathroom floors, windows that have actual glass in them,

The roof of homes here are made with thatched grasses. They have an ability to weave the grasses in a way that keeps the rain out during the heavy storms. I have watched them build the thatched roofs and make bricks and it is pretty impressive work. A roof that is built correctly can last 3-5 years before needed to be replaced. People with more money have tin roofs that can last much longer before needed to be replaced.

People cannot afford healthcare costs here so clinics are run by donor funding by NGOs like CMMB which provide free or low-cost care to people. There are clinics here that people pay to go to certainly. But others, like some of the labor clinics provide free services so women have a chance to deliver their babies in a safer environment with trained medical staff, rather than at home unattended or unassisted. This helps when many times people cannot afford to pay for basic medical care. There are different types of clinics and facilities funded by different organizations to help combat the poverty here. Some focus on nutrition, others on medical care.

It is hard to properly describe what poverty looks like here. You won't see many homeless people because the culture does not support homelessness, meaning that people live with someone even when there isn't money for it, because of duty or obligation to family members or friends. Certainly, there are some and there are still those homes that are put together with tarps and sticks and mud and are the "more traditional" photographed or displayed forms of poverty in developing countries but poverty looks different and feels different here. But the "look" of poverty is different and sometimes it is more of a "feeling" of knowing that the person does not have the means for certain things and the knowledge that that person may not have the means to get food or that their home is deteriorating.

Not only does poverty look different here. Instead of poverty being an exception in life, here poverty is the normative to life. People remain in the cycle of poverty for generations. Finding people who are weather or, more likely, simply not living in poverty is rare. Saving money is rate. When someone gets money it is used to sustain life ad keep death a bay, not to dig one’s way from poverty.

I am not certain how to describe it or show it in a picture that wouldn't be totally cliché and unrealistic. It is something experienced in waves of understanding and through the actual interaction with the community and with those people who struggle with it daily. And poverty is different here than in the capital region. Poverty takes shape and presents itself differently, but no matter where you go here, there is poverty. But there is also hope for things to come, like the flower that grows in the crack of a stone or a tree that grows on a rock ledge. There is hope for the future and potential for people to get help, but first one has to look at and acknowledge the poverty here and find constructive, lasting ways to help.