poverty3: past interest

Why in this world did I think it was a good idea to ask for more awareness of the world's poverty? Whatever was I thinking? Nothing. I was feeling. Feeling the planet's incredible injustice. And the undeniable need for more empathy.

In no way does my own poverty, if I can even call it that, compare to the world's.  But I have this dilemma in common with a part of humanity: while they don't create a dire survival mode, the struggles of my everyday are exactly complicated and distracting enough to leave little or no hope of forward motion.

Here then is what I got in the last two weeks, for that well-intentioned asking: a job that pays a wage so low I have been embarrassed to tell it to anybody. 40 hours a week for more or less the same income I had as a part-time driver. And yeah, I was spending far too much on gas before. But the days also had room to read, to think, to take care of the business of life. And now they don't. Working every Saturday and one Sunday a month means effectively giving up almost all the community events that makes living here worthwhile. And working for so little, I know from past experience, can quickly lead to paying for the past while you're still earning the present...

I asked for a quiet, peaceful home-space. And I got a place that's noisy, roach-infested, and has been under plumbing renovations for two weeks now, with no end in sight. (But yeah, it's all mine...) Every morning I rearrange the stuff that's not already piled in a heap, so the workmen have easy access to the closet, to the bathroom, under the sink. I try to do my stretches, make coffee, greet the morning sun while ignoring the holes cut in the walls for new pipes, the film of sheetrock dust on everything, the dirty tracks on the floor. I try to focus on the four tiny seedlings in the window-boxes, and the so-far empty pots that hold more wishful seeding, and not the barren, dry disconnect with the earth outside. I try to forget, every day, the house I was living in 3 months ago that had almost half an acre of garden, two wells, a chicken coop, and far too many earthy dreams for one weary, overworked, barely-grounded person to act on alone.  Alone in the company of 4 other people.

I asked, it seems, for another chance to deconstruct this incredible inexplicable tangle that, in my world, is relationship. And got, simultaneously, another yes and another frayed knot. Another round of all the things we're both too afraid to ask for, or too self-protective to offer, or too caught up in our own chaos to share. But also another try at friendship, and this intense concentrate-of-conversation which, hopefully, we can keep diluting to a drinkable strength.  Alright then. How many potential presents can one painful past sabotage? And how much not-quite can two people possibly create together?

Read only a few pages of The End of Poverty this morning. Sachs describes one of his investigatory travels as a consultant, to western Kenya. After yet another concise and clearly-detailed outline of the (very possible) actions that would bring this rural region out of its poverty, he offers a fascinating (and deplorable) pair of statistics (as of 2005, the time of the book's writing). Current international donor support annually to Kenya amounts to about 100 million dollars. And Kenya's current debt service amounts to $600 million a year. Can you dig it? It doesn't matter what well-meaning rich countries are giving, intending, or recommending. The people can't climb out at this rate. They can't even pay the past's interest with what they are receiving from the present.

...and, in the moment, I think know exactly how that situation feels...