Poverty

So, I was remembering today the “speech” that you always give kids during Sunday school when you want them to bring stuff for shoeboxes or donate their allowance to build a school in another country. You know, the one about how, if they have more than one toilet in their house, or a car in their garage, or plenty of food to eat, they are richer than most of the world.

Poverty, though, is far more than not having enough stuff. Poverty is the state of having no options. In the West, “going green” is a huge deal right now, being gentle with the environment, living “sustainably,” and, with a few rare exceptions, everyone, regardless of their proximity to the poverty line, is able to make “green” choices.

You can try to create less trash, you can collect your recyclables, and you can hope that your municipal trash collectors are responsible in their creation of land fills. You don’t have to live in a filthy neighborhood. There are ways to clean it up.

In the town we’re living in, though, no amount of money can give you the option of living “green.” The only way to dispose of trash here is to pile it in your yard, and, when the pile becomes too large, or too smelly, you light a match to it. Every bit of it, the plastic, the metal, the Styrofoam, it all has to be burned.

There are constantly piles sputtering smoke and noxious chemicals into the air. And there is no choice but to breathe it in. The plastic bottles that litter every piece of dirt that isn’t a yard are left where they are, because you have two options. Either you leave it where it is, knowing that, eventually, the sand will cover it and it will be forgotten until it finally starts to disintegrate and seeps into the ground water, or you gather it up and you burn it, releasing clouds of stomach churning pollutants into the air (literally, they make you sick to your stomach).

You can poison the town now, or you can poison it in the future.

Poverty isn’t so much about your stuff as it is about what you are or aren’t able to do with your stuff.