What is Poverty?

-          Jo Goodwin Parker

 (It is Jo Goodwin Parker’s poignant and realistic account of the shame, humiliation, and outrage of being poor. She reveals in graphic detail the hard choices she was forced to make in an ever-lasting battle to preserve the health of her three children. She stresses on the point that poverty is more than a picture in a newspaper. It is the stench, the squalor, and the ugliness of living without hope.)

To know about poverty in reality one must pretend oneself in the situation. The writer’s mattress is dirty because it has been used for a diaper. Her surroundings are full of foul smells of various nasty things. There is no shovel for burying the waste materials.

You become tired. You are always polite and a passive listener. Because of the lack of money, you cannot buy nutritious food or medicines. You cannot take care of your children properly. You cannot give them proper health care and schooling because you have to spend more than you earn.

In a situation of poverty, house keeping is very difficult. There will be no proper food for children or soap to wash their clothes. You save money to buy a thing but it gets dearer by the time you have saved the money for its price. Because of the lack of money, you cannot buy fuels. So, you have to wash clothes with cold water at night. Because of hard work, you look older than your age.

You have to cover the walls of your room with papers that may catch fire at midnight. So, you cannot sleep properly at night. You cannot buy insecticides. You cannot afford the price of being clean and tidy. Poverty is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.

You have to ask for help. You have to take loan. Otherwise, your children will suffer. Asking for help is shameful and humiliating. You have to tell people about your misery repeatedly. You feel both shame and sadness at the same time.

Poverty provides her the free time to think about her past. She left her school because of her rich classmates who mocked at her and worn out dress. She joined work but she had no permanent job. She married at early age. Her husband lost his comfortable job. They had three children in three years because the birth control was costly. Then, she got divorce from her husband.

She earns seventy-eight dollars a month. She pays twenty dollars a month rent, and she spends most of her monthly income on food. She has to be economic in other things.

Poverty means black future. Her children can’t play with the rich children. They are often encaged within their own house premises. If they become free, they enslave themselves to alcohol or drugs.

Her children are physically sick and weak. They do not have enough educational materials. They do not get nutritious food in good quantity. As a result, they are malnourished though they are alike. She lives in a place far away from the health clinics. Her neighbour expects her to pay the price of his help at any cost.

Poverty is an acid that drips on pride until all pride is worn away. Doing something in a situation of chronic poverty is helpless. Dreams are possible only when you have money in hand.