When I was growing up in rural Kenya, my family was extremely poor. We hardly had enough to eat, and my mother had to seek casual labour every day. In most cases she was paid in kind with one or two kilogrammes of some food stuffs like maize, beans or whatever the "employer" felt like paying her that day. Quantity was supposed to be cash-equivalent based on the daily wage and prevailing food prices. Considering that the neighbours who were "rich" enough to afford to engage casual labourers were few in my village, sometimes my mother looked for work with no success. Other times she walked far distances in search of work - mostly farm work - weeding, planting, harvesting etc. The employer determined how much she/he would pay per piece of work - usually measured by meters or something like that. So the harder my mother worked, the more she would cover, and thus the more she would be paid.
There was this neighbour who was relatively rich (the family owned a car and they had a permanent house!). As long as there was work, my mother preferred working there since it was close to home, and the family was generally nice to us. They had two boys and two girls, one of them my age mate who for the purpose of this blog we shall call Eve. Eve and I were classmates at school and walked home together after school. Whenever mother was working at Eve's home, she would request us to pass by there to help her finish wanted portion of work she had remained. I remember doing this when I was as young as 9 years. In another world, people will consider that as child labour, but lets just say for poor rural families, that is called "family working together to survive". Saturdays were even better as we could all work the whole day and earn enough food to cover us for Sunday and Monday.
One day, when I was about 11 years old, we were working with mother and my sister. I looked at my mother and asked innocently "mum, why are we poor and Eve's family are not?". Now, my mother is an excellent orator and story teller. She explained in details how long time ago people used to move from one place to another "acquiring land" and whoever acquired the bigger or fertile portions, ended up rich. My grand father, for reasons I cannot remember mother explaining, had acquired a huge chunk of land that was hilly and very barren. That explains why we could not grow our own food. Of course there were other family issues that complicated our livelihood, but that is for another day.
I vaguely remember promising my mother that I will work hard in school, get a good job and buy her nice fertile land so she can grow her own food. For a family that could hardly feed itself (and by that time my mother had 7 children), the prospects of affording schools fees for a secondary education were very dim. Lets just say, through miraculous means, I actually worked hard, got very good grades in primary and secondary schools and acquired a university degree. Now I have a good job, and YES, I did buy land for my mother, although she is now quite old to do much farm work.
So now I am not poor any more, and I have no worries about my next meal... I should be happy and contented? Sadly I am not. My childhood memories remain with me. Every time I see a 11 year girl or boy in any rural setting, I wonder what they are going through, what their charges are, and what they will become if they do get lucky as I did. What worries me most however, is what would become of them if they were not so luck to get miracles like I did. That is where my fight with poverty starts. I ask why a child, born innocent and equal to any other child, should miss out the opportunity to become the best they can become, just because their grandfather made some unwise decision...or for whatever other reason, they simply were born into poverty.
And that, my friends, is my relationship with poverty, and we shall keep fighting until the battle is won. If I am chosen the solder, shall fight to the end, I am the commander, I shall lead the troops, and if I am the general, well, I shall - like a good general should - be always on the front line.
