This is What White People Think Poverty Looks Like
Poverty should be measured differently in different parts of the world
Raise your hand if you consider yourself poor.
Give 50 claps to this article if you don’t consider yourself poor, but want to be wealthier than you are now.
Of all the amazing things the internet has brought us, one of them is podcasts. These days you can sit in the comfort of your room, turn on your device, and listen to someone far away in a distant land air out their soul to the world.
And so, either for lack of something more productive to do or out of the sheer love I have for boring myself to near death by listening to the lamentations of old white men, I tuned in on my regular podcast; Freakonomics Radio.
This particular episode was about suicide. Quite paradoxically, suicide rates are higher in wealthier societies and groups than in poorer societies. But of course, to paint a really vivid picture of this, you’d have to describe what a wealthy society looks like and what a poor country or group looks like.
Cue in one of the hosts (no I won’t tell you which one).
“…why do more people commit suicide? If you think about the poorest people in the world, surviving on less than a dollar a day, having to walk three miles to get water and carry 70-pound packs of water back just to survive, and those people do everything they can to stay alive. Whereas I think if I were in that situation, wouldn’t I just kill myself”?
When you hear these words, what comes to mind?
For me, it was self-evident that the speaker was trying to conjure some image of poor people in Africa, or somewhere in Latin America. Next to this is the image of the poor kid they always show on television or billboards for advertisements when they want you to donate; you know the kid with flies buzzing all over them, wearing ragged clothes and a plate in their hand? Classic ‘poor people’ image!
I was intrigued. Why?
It was intriguing to me that for this Caucasian man, his idea of the poorest people in the world involves them going a long distance to get water. And oh, they have to carry it on their heads too.
Now I’m thinking to myself; holy cow! How many more people think the same?
In this spirit of full disclosure, this a good point to reveal that I’m African. Maybe this contributed in some way to why I found this image and description of poverty a tad bit ridiculous. I’m a scientist, so I understand the part where living on less than a dollar a day is defined as poverty. But the part about walking three miles to fetch water, that part I didn’t quite get.
Where I come from, it is not uncommon for the source of water to be quite some distance from where you live, meaning you have to travel to get water. River, stream, borehole, it doesn’t matter; if you want water, you’d have to travel that distance.
I hear you saying to yourself “So you can’t just turn on your tap in your kitchen and water flows”? Well, most cities in Nigeria do not have a centralized water system. By this, I mean that the government or city does not provide water to the citizens. The other alternative is to dig a borehole, your private source of water. That’s the only way to get water flowing in your tap.
And digging a borehole doesn’t come cheap.
However, in some places, your money won’t help you much. There are many factors to consider when digging a borehole, including topography and soil composition. In some places, even with all the money you have, it’s difficult to get groundwater because of the composition of the soil.
A classic example is Enugu State. Enugu State is a city in the South-east of Nigeria. The name ‘Enugu’ literally translates to ‘top of the hill’ or ‘hilltop’. Do you know why? Oh well, your guess is as good as mine. The city is actually built on a hilltop. The soil beneath is very rocky and dry. It shouldn’t take a soothsayer to tell you that people in this city have a hard time digging boreholes or finding water. In certain parts of Enugu, don’t even bother digging a borehole, it’s useless, especially in the dry seasons.
As a person who was born in Enugu and didn’t have ready access to water owing to a combination of the government’s incompetence and geography, if you are asking if I’ve had to walk some distance to fetch some water in the past, the answer is yes. I also happen to know millionaires who don’t have access to ready water in their homes.
Hopefully, by this point, you understand why describing poverty as walking some miles to fetch water and carrying it on your head back home sounds quite ridiculous to me.
Don’t get me wrong, having a comfortable life shouldn’t be for a select group of people. Everybody deserves to have ready access to clean and affordable water.
For an individual who grew up in the Western world or any other country where you can turn on your tap and voila! water comes running out, I understand that what might be luxury for others is a basic requirement for this individual. However, for the many others in other parts of the world who do not have this luxury, it doesn’t mean they are poor. Surprise Surprise!
If you are curious about the podcast I referred to, it’s Episode 40 of Freakonomics Radio; The Suicide Paradox. It was hosted by Steven Dubner and Steve Levitt.