diverse poverty

As I spend more time in my slum community, certain physical, tangible indicators of poverty, or “poor living conditions”, become more normal to me.

A big temptation for people like me who come from economically wealthy western cultures is to project our ideals and values onto the lives of people from other cultures and backgrounds. For example, if I observe my slum community and say, “Every family should have more than one room as their house, their private toilet plus chairs and a table,” I am speaking from my affluent western mindset. Maybe they really would value all those things. But maybe they would prioritize other things that I would not place as much value upon. I have friends who rent out multiple rooms to tenants and yet they don’t have a bathroom in their house.

I have to remind myself that poverty, or being poor, is not always tangible, physical and easily observable with the eye – especially my inexperienced foreign eyes. I need to be aware of my cultural blind spots and learn what my neighbors really value.

So then what is poverty if we can’t always see it? Well, I don’t know, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m living in a slum community so I can understand more! And at the same time, as a person who has not experienced economic poverty, maybe I need to admit my own inner poverty that I sometimes experience, like my brokenness, sin, loneliness and so on. Mother Teresa talked about loneliness, or feeling unwanted as the deepest form of poverty, which can happen in both a mansion or a slum community. It seems we all experience various forms of inner poverty but sometimes don’t call it what it is. We’re all human.

I’ve asked some neighbor kids what they want to do when they grow up. One dreams of being a teacher. Another says he’ll drop out of school by the age of fifteen and do a sewing job or something. One boy says he doesn’t know.

I can guess which kids have been told what they will do in life (or not do) and I can guess which kids have been encouraged to dream and hope. They might have the same living conditions in a slum community, but one still knows how to dream and another has given up dreaming.

What about a sister and brother in a culture that often treats daughters and sons very differently? They have the same house and family, yet the sister is expected, at age eleven (like one girl I know), to drop out of school to start working, but the brother is pushed as far as he can in school. The brother gets to explore and dream while the sister comes home from work only to be forced to do more work in the house instead of playing, exploring and dreaming of future possibilities. Who is in greater poverty?

The self-esteem and confidence among those in poverty varies, no doubt. But I’ve witnessed many people who are poor who actually act as if they are less valuable, important, intelligent, or worthy of respect and dignity. This not only results in getting cheated by the rich who have more confident voices and more realized power, but also creates an aching feeling of inferiority and shame in people who bear the image of God. I recall seeing an elderly doorman being beaten and shamed in public by a man half his age wearing a power suit. The elderly man experienced the poverty of shame, powerlessness and probably low wages. The young, well-dressed man experienced the poverty of acting like an animal who dehumanized his brother.

Poverty is more than housing and income. It’s economic, spiritual, physical, psychological and social. I believe these things are intertwined in such a way that they are inseparably related. Can you think of one aspect that is completely isolated from the others? I can’t.

We have to be careful of our cultural blind spots and realize there is more below the surface. For me, living more simply in a slum community has challenged my ideas of being “poor” and being “rich”. I’ve realized that living this simply helps me to identify with my neighbors more easily. It helps me depend on God more authentically. It reminds me of the wasteful, hoarding, consumer culture that I come from but need not submit to. I’ve been learning to share space and resources in new ways which have stretched me. It’s often not easy, but usually rewarding. I’ve been learning that even in my wealth, I experience inner poverty more than I’d like to admit. I’ve been learning that my neighbors, even in their poverty, can often teach me the art of community, joy, contentment, perseverance and hope in spite of their struggles.

It seems that we all possess both poverty and riches of some kind. I’m trying to learn how to share my poverty and riches with my neighbors who have welcomed me and have freely shared their poverty and riches with me.