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(Not) dealing with poverty
One thing us humans sure are good at is avoiding the sad realities of the world until they are so unbelievably close to our eyeballs we have no choice but to look… And even then our brains manage to justify their presence.
Every time I travel to a country where clean water, a roof over your head and even a meal are not givens but privileges, I have a minor breakdown.
How do you sit back enjoying your meal, knowing that the kid watching you would probably last off the same amount of money for several weeks (Or months?!?), how do you NOT buy endless pocket sizes tissue packets off the women wandering the streets at night with their babies sleeping on their backs? How can you NOT feel immense guilt that EVERY single thing you buy back at home costs more than these people earn in a day?
One thing I will not do is accept the well-told ‘travel hardened’ justification that these people who pester you at your dinner table should be simply ignored or that they are carrying their babies to make you feel guilty.
Because, even if that is correct, what kind of mother would do that to her child unless the other options were worse? and why do we always assume that the poorest amongst us are the most greedy? How can we live by the notion that all humans are created equal EXCEPT the vast majority of us, who have no wealth, and these people should be ignored even when they are right in front of your face?
The joys of Vietnam 4 years on from my last visit, is that even in the middle of the tourist district, sitting on a roadside restaurant, if you give the equivalent of 1 Vietnamese meals worth of money to EVERY person who comes by asking for money, you will be parting with less than $10, add that to the $4 you pay for your dinner and beer, and you have only spent the same amount as a cheap meal back at home. And no, the hordes don’t come racing, the smiles however, do.
Aside from the non-stop fun we are having, this trip serves as yet another reminder of the extreme wealth we possess and the duty that comes along with it. Handing out meal money is not the solution, but it does serve to show a little respect to the people whose country you are traveling through and whose lives are, to you, a tourist attraction.
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
October 17th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Why do you feel guilty? That these people are so poor is not your fault, or my fault.
It is purely and completely the fault of their socialist/communist government which cares not at all for the welfare of their people as long as the leaders are comfortable.
The closest you can bring the fault to home is to put blame on those who protested against US and NZ involvement in the war in Vietnam in the early 70′s. They may have been sincere and well-meaning, but they were dead wrong.
Do we have a duty to fight and overthrow evil governments around the world. and free their people? I really don’t know. But if we want to bring them out of poverty that is the proven way to do it. Just look at Japan and Germany today.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Nat … great post. There is much we cannot do about the system, but there is much that we CAN do on an individual level. Empathy and action is a great combination.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Japan and Germany got INTO the situations they were in BECAUSE of massive state economic expansion. The Nazi’s and Nipponese fascists were popular leaders in their countries BECAUSE they championed industry and raised living standards.
Socialism is not evil, fascism is evil. Fascism can take extreme communist AND capitalist forms, but to label the structural causes of global inequality as a simple black and white political issue is fairly ridiculous and inflammatory. The Vietnam war was complete nonsense on multiple levels, and achieved no clear outcome on either side, though it did raze large parts of SE Asia to the ground.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Go into the world with your eyes open and see the truth. Because the truth will set you free. But it will piss off a hell of a lot of people first!
My wife and I (she’s Sri Lankan) ‘adopted’ a couple of families in a village near where she was raised. They are both ‘single parent’ where the man has abandoned the family; in one case selling the family home out from under his wife and seven children and having them pushed into the gutter while he went off to live in Malaysia with a new woman.
It costs us about $200 a month to look after the families, which includes everything they need for the kids to attend school. One has just passed A Level Exams with an A+ average and started attending University this month.
While it doesn’t solve the problems of poverty and war that the country face; and doesn’t create a welfare/unemployment system in a country that has no safety net at all. It does put two families on a path upward from total penury. If every working family in NZ did the same for one destitute family in the third world, there probably wouldn’t be a third world in two generations!
Go well
October 21st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hi Nat, hope the travels are fun and safe.
I don’t really agree personally with giving money into the hand. I just feel that since I can’t help everyone who needs it, giving to the few that come up to me or that I pass by is not going to affect things as much as giving to a charity that can make lasting changes.
All said and done though, you are going to get more utility out of giving than say, buying another 3 beers, so go for it. I don’t really buy the argument that doing so causes any harm, though I guess that will vary from situation to situation.
I myself am guilty of giving chocolate to starving waifs I find on Manners st from time to time so I cannot talk :)
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Ronan, those waifs appreciate it!
Yup, it’s a tricky one. The Vietnam war was such a cause for controversy, people still feel angry… My father was over here during the war flying supplies and people around, I would have been an anti-war protester. We both agree now that the only solid lesson you can learn from a war like that is that everyone loses. And they continue to lose for decades after.
The complexities of the situation – trade sanctions, non-professional soldiers, propaganda, a country that has been through a thousand years of war… Makes it difficult to know WHAT would have happened if war never happened. I would like to think nothing much could be worse than the end result. But who am I to say?
September 30th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
It’s very heartening to see some people showing compassion for the less fortunate. It’s quite a rarity and more so nowadays since compassion is often misconstrued as a sign of weakness which it is definitely not.