Well, the closest I've come to an experience similar was staying a month with my wife's family on their land in Paraguay.
I understand the poverty you're talking about, Tom, though I didn't need to spend a year living with them to understand how completely mired in not only poverty but complete ignorance most of the poor in the world are. I found places like Angola, India (at least 15 years ago) and Tunisia even worse...
The problem is, short of rolling in with our tanks and jets and changing governments around the world, there's not much that can be done. And that doesn't work either because it has to come from within, from the people themselves. Embargoes against government don't hurt the leaders usually, but rather the very people you're trying to help.
The best way to deal with poverty, in my opinion, is education.
My wife's family, until fairly recently, lived with no electricity, dirt floors, in a tiny house made of hand-cut rough timbers, gaps in the walls, grass roofs. A hand-dug well. No appliances, little furniture. About 8 years ago my wife and her older sister came to BA to find work and lived with rich Argentines cleaning their houses and washing their clothes and taking care of their children.
They managed to send enough money home to build a (small) brick house with a tile roof, over two years. I met my wife just about the time they had completed the house. It had no glass windows, rough wooden shutters and doors. Still no bathroom. They used a quite unsanitary outhouse and bathed with cold well water (even in the winter) on a small concrete slab outside, closed off (mostly) with the same rough planking their old "house" was built of (they still use the old house - 12 brothers and sisters requires a lot of space).
They also got electricity about the time they finished the house. My wife, when she arrived here (so she tells me) could barely speak any Spanish, and when I went there, only a few of the younger ones (including my younger 16-year-old sister-in-law who lives with us) had learned any Spanish in school. to this time, I have to have conversation with her father translated. Everyone there speaks Guarani. I haven't learned it yet, unfortunately.
They saved up enough money while my wife and her sister were getting the house built to have a 150 meter well drilled, and bought a pump to get the water out. The water table that is accessible by hand-dug wells dries up in the summer and they had to go to a small stream, about half a kilometer away, to bring water to the house for cooking. Baths didn't happen very often in the summer.
The new well and pump were going to help them get away from purely subsistence farming as well. Mandioca and sesame are about the only crops that can be grown there without irrigation.
My father-in-law planted strawberries and tomatoes soon after getting a rudimentary irrigation system implemented. They got off one crop of each before the pump was stolen. They guarded the pump night and day, but one of the kids, who was on guard duty at the time, came back to house for about half an hour for a piece of birthday cake during a celebration and when he got back, the pump was gone.
They found out later that one of their neighbors had stolen it. Sold it for about $50 USD - it was worth around $2000 USD. Not only did they want the money ($50 was about a month's salary for that family), but the rumors were that it was also targeted because the family of the guy who stole it were jealous that my wife's family had managed to move ahead just a little bit from others around there.
They suffered for four years because they lost that pump.
After I met my wife, I went to meet the family and got married there. Absolutely great people. But ignorant. My father-in-law never finished 3rd grade. My mother-in-law finished high school with her first daughter two years old. She's considered fairly highly educated.
Before I left, we made a deal with a local builder to build them a bathroom. I couldn't believe how they were living.
They never told me about the whole pump thing until fairly recently. They're very proud people, which is not very common there. Most people who live around them do anything they can to take advantage of others, particularly if they are seen as having money. They couldn't imagine asking me for help, thinking that I'd think their daughter married me just so they could take advantage of me.
At first my wife wanted us to send $50 a month to their family to help them survive. As I started understanding a little more the dynamics of their situation and started thinking how to help them, I realized that 1) sending $50 a month was just helping them buy a few essentials every month but wasn't doing anything substantial and 2) giving people money to live does absolutely nothing to help them get out of their predicament.
I bought them a small herd of cows, pigs, chickens and sheep. They started selling milk and cheese from the cows, eggs from the chickens. The animals reproduce and are eaten and sold at times. Their standard of living and their ability support themselves soared. We've helped out with a few things here and there afterward, but not emergency, dire things.
When I found out about the pump, I knew we had to figure out a way to get them another one. This was about a year ago. We still had to get a better irrigation system installed, but up until now, they've been selling crops other than sesame and mandioca.
I recently found out that they had gotten themselves into "share-cropper's" debts with a local sesame company and a bank who take advantage of the ignorant poor to get the farmers' crops at just about cost. It's a long story how my father-in-law got so in debt, but he thought he was being smart and buying wholesale for the company with loans from the bank and got totally screwed by them and also by the farmers he was buying harvest from.
We have brought 4 of my wife's brothers here, helped them get legal and find decent jobs and decent places to live (it's all relative) so they can help pay off the debt.
In the meantime, we got a new pump purchased and this time had it buried a few meters underground so it can't easily be stolen. We're now working on plans to finish up the irrigation system and I'm working with one of the sons, who has had some post-high school training administrative and agricultural training, to figure out the best rotation of crops to get the most out of their investment. At the end of the year the debt will be paid off and a plan in action for them to be able to plant at least 2 hectares with decent crops, maybe more if we can swing it.
I write all of this not to attempt to preempt Tom's unique story, but rather to try to answer a fundamental question beyond his "why" into "how."
Governments, particularly here, sure as hell ain't going to do a damn thing about any of this. Nor should they. They should get the f__k our of the way and let people do business, and treat everyone under the law equally. Until then, people have to be taught that they can do things for themselves. In the process, grow a grass-roots movement for real change.
The people themselves have to understand that they don't have to live in this kind of poverty. It's a choice, in the long run. It's a tough fight, and it takes more than getting up in the morning and lamenting the fact that they are poor and then demonstrating in the streets when things get bad (to them). The knowledge has to come to them in some fashion, confidence must be built, examples of how it is to be done actually put into place.
I decided five years ago when I visited my wife's family in Paraguay that I'd found my mission in life, as late as it is coming to me. My wife's family is an experiment in how to proceed, but I plan to move to Paraguay in some years and plant myself right there, in the midst of the poorest "departamento" in the country and start showing people slowly but surely how they can make things better. Until I die from natural causes or someone kills me
(of course, I'm hoping the latter doesn't happen, but I'm not an idiot - this will upset a lot of people's horse carts).
But it requires capital to accomplish anything on any kind of scale. I'm working on various business projects that I hope in the not-too-distant-future will give me that capital.
Poor people need access to low-interest loans. They need to be taught some basic principles, such as reading and writing and how to think in a more logical, deliberate manner. They need to be taught that with a little cooperation amongst themselves they can start helping each other instead of helping to do the rich people's work of keeping each other down.
They need to be taught how to understand money and use it, not wish for it, steal it, or try to win the lottery. They need to be taught basic agricultural concepts. The list goes on and on.
A lesson that comes from a book from an organization that I don't particularly care for, but is included with many other good lessons if you read it the right way: don't give them fish - teach them how to catch their own.
I've seen such completely asinine, stupid and needlessly deadly things come out of this extreme poverty. But I've also seen these poor, ignorant people having been handed money and blow it on fancy food and clothes and have nothing left for it afterward. It doesn't work.
There ARE enough rich people around the world to do things like this, but that's not what it takes. What it takes is one-on-one compassion and people to get off their asses and spread a bit of their knowledge and know-how to individuals.
Sending money to a "feed the world" campaign you saw on TV ain't gonna do the trick, that's for sure. Neither is governments taking money at gunpoint from their citizens so that those governments can give it to other, even more corrupt governments, going to do anything but exacerbate the problem.
I understand the poverty you're talking about, Tom, though I didn't need to spend a year living with them to understand how completely mired in not only poverty but complete ignorance most of the poor in the world are. I found places like Angola, India (at least 15 years ago) and Tunisia even worse...
The problem is, short of rolling in with our tanks and jets and changing governments around the world, there's not much that can be done. And that doesn't work either because it has to come from within, from the people themselves. Embargoes against government don't hurt the leaders usually, but rather the very people you're trying to help.
The best way to deal with poverty, in my opinion, is education.
My wife's family, until fairly recently, lived with no electricity, dirt floors, in a tiny house made of hand-cut rough timbers, gaps in the walls, grass roofs. A hand-dug well. No appliances, little furniture. About 8 years ago my wife and her older sister came to BA to find work and lived with rich Argentines cleaning their houses and washing their clothes and taking care of their children.
They managed to send enough money home to build a (small) brick house with a tile roof, over two years. I met my wife just about the time they had completed the house. It had no glass windows, rough wooden shutters and doors. Still no bathroom. They used a quite unsanitary outhouse and bathed with cold well water (even in the winter) on a small concrete slab outside, closed off (mostly) with the same rough planking their old "house" was built of (they still use the old house - 12 brothers and sisters requires a lot of space).
They also got electricity about the time they finished the house. My wife, when she arrived here (so she tells me) could barely speak any Spanish, and when I went there, only a few of the younger ones (including my younger 16-year-old sister-in-law who lives with us) had learned any Spanish in school. to this time, I have to have conversation with her father translated. Everyone there speaks Guarani. I haven't learned it yet, unfortunately.
They saved up enough money while my wife and her sister were getting the house built to have a 150 meter well drilled, and bought a pump to get the water out. The water table that is accessible by hand-dug wells dries up in the summer and they had to go to a small stream, about half a kilometer away, to bring water to the house for cooking. Baths didn't happen very often in the summer.
The new well and pump were going to help them get away from purely subsistence farming as well. Mandioca and sesame are about the only crops that can be grown there without irrigation.
My father-in-law planted strawberries and tomatoes soon after getting a rudimentary irrigation system implemented. They got off one crop of each before the pump was stolen. They guarded the pump night and day, but one of the kids, who was on guard duty at the time, came back to house for about half an hour for a piece of birthday cake during a celebration and when he got back, the pump was gone.
They found out later that one of their neighbors had stolen it. Sold it for about $50 USD - it was worth around $2000 USD. Not only did they want the money ($50 was about a month's salary for that family), but the rumors were that it was also targeted because the family of the guy who stole it were jealous that my wife's family had managed to move ahead just a little bit from others around there.
They suffered for four years because they lost that pump.
After I met my wife, I went to meet the family and got married there. Absolutely great people. But ignorant. My father-in-law never finished 3rd grade. My mother-in-law finished high school with her first daughter two years old. She's considered fairly highly educated.
Before I left, we made a deal with a local builder to build them a bathroom. I couldn't believe how they were living.
They never told me about the whole pump thing until fairly recently. They're very proud people, which is not very common there. Most people who live around them do anything they can to take advantage of others, particularly if they are seen as having money. They couldn't imagine asking me for help, thinking that I'd think their daughter married me just so they could take advantage of me.
At first my wife wanted us to send $50 a month to their family to help them survive. As I started understanding a little more the dynamics of their situation and started thinking how to help them, I realized that 1) sending $50 a month was just helping them buy a few essentials every month but wasn't doing anything substantial and 2) giving people money to live does absolutely nothing to help them get out of their predicament.
I bought them a small herd of cows, pigs, chickens and sheep. They started selling milk and cheese from the cows, eggs from the chickens. The animals reproduce and are eaten and sold at times. Their standard of living and their ability support themselves soared. We've helped out with a few things here and there afterward, but not emergency, dire things.
When I found out about the pump, I knew we had to figure out a way to get them another one. This was about a year ago. We still had to get a better irrigation system installed, but up until now, they've been selling crops other than sesame and mandioca.
I recently found out that they had gotten themselves into "share-cropper's" debts with a local sesame company and a bank who take advantage of the ignorant poor to get the farmers' crops at just about cost. It's a long story how my father-in-law got so in debt, but he thought he was being smart and buying wholesale for the company with loans from the bank and got totally screwed by them and also by the farmers he was buying harvest from.
We have brought 4 of my wife's brothers here, helped them get legal and find decent jobs and decent places to live (it's all relative) so they can help pay off the debt.
In the meantime, we got a new pump purchased and this time had it buried a few meters underground so it can't easily be stolen. We're now working on plans to finish up the irrigation system and I'm working with one of the sons, who has had some post-high school training administrative and agricultural training, to figure out the best rotation of crops to get the most out of their investment. At the end of the year the debt will be paid off and a plan in action for them to be able to plant at least 2 hectares with decent crops, maybe more if we can swing it.
I write all of this not to attempt to preempt Tom's unique story, but rather to try to answer a fundamental question beyond his "why" into "how."
Governments, particularly here, sure as hell ain't going to do a damn thing about any of this. Nor should they. They should get the f__k our of the way and let people do business, and treat everyone under the law equally. Until then, people have to be taught that they can do things for themselves. In the process, grow a grass-roots movement for real change.
The people themselves have to understand that they don't have to live in this kind of poverty. It's a choice, in the long run. It's a tough fight, and it takes more than getting up in the morning and lamenting the fact that they are poor and then demonstrating in the streets when things get bad (to them). The knowledge has to come to them in some fashion, confidence must be built, examples of how it is to be done actually put into place.
I decided five years ago when I visited my wife's family in Paraguay that I'd found my mission in life, as late as it is coming to me. My wife's family is an experiment in how to proceed, but I plan to move to Paraguay in some years and plant myself right there, in the midst of the poorest "departamento" in the country and start showing people slowly but surely how they can make things better. Until I die from natural causes or someone kills me
(of course, I'm hoping the latter doesn't happen, but I'm not an idiot - this will upset a lot of people's horse carts).But it requires capital to accomplish anything on any kind of scale. I'm working on various business projects that I hope in the not-too-distant-future will give me that capital.
Poor people need access to low-interest loans. They need to be taught some basic principles, such as reading and writing and how to think in a more logical, deliberate manner. They need to be taught that with a little cooperation amongst themselves they can start helping each other instead of helping to do the rich people's work of keeping each other down.
They need to be taught how to understand money and use it, not wish for it, steal it, or try to win the lottery. They need to be taught basic agricultural concepts. The list goes on and on.
A lesson that comes from a book from an organization that I don't particularly care for, but is included with many other good lessons if you read it the right way: don't give them fish - teach them how to catch their own.
I've seen such completely asinine, stupid and needlessly deadly things come out of this extreme poverty. But I've also seen these poor, ignorant people having been handed money and blow it on fancy food and clothes and have nothing left for it afterward. It doesn't work.
There ARE enough rich people around the world to do things like this, but that's not what it takes. What it takes is one-on-one compassion and people to get off their asses and spread a bit of their knowledge and know-how to individuals.
Sending money to a "feed the world" campaign you saw on TV ain't gonna do the trick, that's for sure. Neither is governments taking money at gunpoint from their citizens so that those governments can give it to other, even more corrupt governments, going to do anything but exacerbate the problem.
