just one more week???

how did this happen? my time has come and is nearly gone and what do i have to show for it. well thankfully I think I have gotten a lot out of this trip. I read Jeffery Sachs' "The End of Poverty" this week and he was talking about the different levels of poverty. He mentioned the idea of relative poverty which is what we mostly have in the United States. I mean yeah there are poor people in America but the vast majority of them do not live in dirt floored mud huts and dont have enough caloric intake to sustain life at all, so relatively speaking they are poor compared to the rest of the affluence running around the US. Then there is poverty which is the people in the world that barely have enough to scrape by but they either make enough food that there is some sort of progress or they have some sort of financial income that allows them to at least be stable. This is primarily what I have dealt with before in Asia and in Latin America. Yes there are people in those countries that live in more destitute life shattering poverty but the vast majority are not in any threat of dying from hunger any time soon. Then it comes to extreme dire, one small injury from death poverty which is the vast majority of Africa.

I had realized when I got to Liberia that I had never seen poverty like this before but I didn't really know any of the numbers behind it. I had no idea that I was looking at a whole other ball game. So I have come to think that the lack of development and therefore crippling poverty in Africa comes from a few different things. first, the infrastructure is horrible. there is no running water, no electricity, no roads, one barely functioning airport, no telecommunications no nothing. This last week I was in Lofa. It is now the rainy season and the roads that before were bad bumpy roads are now giant mud pits that you go from one to the next pushing yourself out of. You can not move crops on the roads (85% of Liberians are farmers), you cant get to a hosptial ( as previously explained they are far far away from most of the people), you cant even get to a family members funeral before they have to burry the person because there is no such thing as a morgue or a freezer to hold the body in. You are basically grounded to your village or anything within walking distance. The lack of electricity cuts down of efficiency in other places as well. kids cant study at night or do anything else because there is no light to do it with so that means as of 7:00 pm you are done for the night and the sun doesnt come up again till about 6:30 the next day and you are close to the equator so that pretty much doesnt change all day long. No running water so you spend huge parts of your time looking for water to bathe, clean, wash clothes, cook food etc. and then there is no gas or electricity to cook on so you have to get fire wood which, depending on how long people have lived in your area and how thorouhgly everything is picked through means you are walking quite a distance to find some wood to cook on for the day. basically all your time is spent providing for the basics of life meaning you have no time at all to invest in your future by going to school, growing extra food anything like that.

the next thing I blame is the horrible governance of this country. It can be argued that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia's president) is doing a fairly decent job provided with what she is up against but then again most people would argue the opposite. I just know that Liberia has had like 5-6% growth for the last three years which is almost unheard of post protracted conflict. But between the war and malicious rulers this country has been lead astray continually and this probably explains for why more of the wealth doesnt go into doing things like building the infratructure and investing in health care and eduction. This is one point i disagree with Sachs on. He lets off the leadership pretty blame free saying that its mostly the fault of health reasons and lack of infrastructure but I would argue that the reason there hasnt been money to invest in these areas is because its all going into the American bank accounts of Liberia's elite Americo-Liberian ethnic group.

Then there is health concerns. In liberia that means Malaria and AIDS. everyone gets Malaria all the time. by that I mean Sachs provides statistics that pretty much everyone gets it at least once a year. I thought that was excessive till I started asking everyone about it and they said that that was right on. everyone I have asked as had it at least once in the last year most of them have had it at least two times. Now, Malaria is not nearly as bad as we think of it when we hear it in the states. I mean yeah its bad, it will floor you but unless you are really young or really old its not going to be lethal. that being said it does kill millions every year of the young and the old and those that are already weakened by other things...for example aids, or starvation or any number of other maladies found in abundance here. So when i started thinking about what that means that everyone gets Malaria at least once a year. that means that thats about a week that you are out of commision (Malaria is like having a really really bad flu). So thats one week a year that everyone is out of school, not working on their farm, not able to take care of their kids. one week guaranteed, thats a lot of man hours. not to mention that if Malaria is not treated fast enough it can leave lasting side effects that will dibilitate for life.

So I dont know what that was all about but it was on my mind recently. Basically that I was blindsided that I thought I had seen dire poverty and knew what it was but now realize that i didnt have a clue what i was talking about and if i had a clue i didnt really have any sort of understanding what that clue was alluding to. And still, just because I have seen it close up doesn't mean i really understand. I mean I stop in the villages stay for a few days and then get in my giant toyota land cruiser (by the way, i have a testimony of the amazingness of that machine and what it can do, holy crap is it a powerful powerful beast!) and drive back here to the compound and take a shower, hop on the internet and get a cold drink... what do I know? I'm forced to admit that I know nothing.