Poverty

Poverty

            What is poverty?  I pondered this one day as I walked down the streets of Chicago.  Around the corner I saw a homeless man sitting on the street begging for change.  Begging because he had nothing but the clothes on his back.  Poverty wasn’t the look in his eyes of his broken spirit, lost hope, or the feeling in his body of confusions and loneliness.  Instead it was the constant aching in his stomach longing for a meal, the lacking a proper shelter, medical care and income showed a world of poverty.

            This thinking continued as I got out of the van in Castillo Buritto, Mexico.  I stepped into a world of abandonment and scarcity.  Houses of grass, sticks and mud.  Inside there is nothing but a mud floor and a homemade hammock that a family of seven would sleep in.  No running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing.  Huge barrels hold water for drinking, washing, and cooking.  Tarantulas, bugs, sticks, and dirt float in the water while chickens and pigs run in every direction.  Wild dogs, so skinny that I can see every bone in their rib cage, are covered in scars and burns lay everywhere.  Glass, cans, paper, bags scattered every which way throughout the streets.  My feet ache as they step in the glass.  Children not fully dressed run and play barefoot.  These families live poverty stricken, tired, and hungry.

            Poverty: lacking the essential needs of life; shelter, water, food, clothing, schooling, or medical help.  Imagine watching your child die because of unclean water, or from a curable disease for which you can’t afford medicine.  Not being able to provide proper food or shelter for your family.  Poverty with its many faces, changes from place to place and across time.  But one thing always remains the same; everyone wants to escape poverty.