Poverty! Can anyone who has not really been poor know what poverty is? I really doubt it. A poor man struggles very hard to have good meal in a day. How can anyone who enjoys three square meals a day explain how poverty means? As a matter of fact, can someone who has two full meals a day claim to know poverty? Perhaps, one begins to grasp the real meaning of poverty and hunger as cousins.
If you are wearing a suit, or a complete traditional attire, and you look naturally rotund in your apparel, you cannot understand what poverty entails. The poor man lacks clothing. A person begins to have true feel of what poverty means when, apart from the tattered clothes on his body, he doesn’t have any other, not even, a blanket to keep away the cold at night.
However, let us face it, how can anyone who has never slept outside, in the open, appreciate the full harsh import of homelessness? The poor man is homeless. He who can lay claim to a house, however humble, cannot claim to be poor. If he can afford to rent a flat, or a room in a town or city, without the landlord giving him issue, he cannot claim to be poor. The really affected one that is, the poor man has no roof over his head, and this is why you find him under bridge, in a tent or simply in the vast open air.
But that is not all. The poor man faces the world as a hopeless underdog. The world sees him as an inferior being. In every discussing, every event involving him and others, he is constantly reminded of his failure in life. Nobody listens attentively when he makes a point, nobody accepts that his opinion merits consideration. He is regarded as a fool. So, in most cases, he learns to accept that he has neither wisdom or opinion.
The poor man lacks naturally rubs off on his child who is subject not only the hunger of the body but also of the mind. He lacks the resources to send his child to school even in communities where education is free. Denied access to modern communications media, the poor man’s child has very little opportunity to understand the concept taught him. The poor child has little option but to drop out of school.
Finally, that is still not all, the poor man is prone to diseases. He is weakened by hunger, embattled by cold and exposed to the element, feeding on poor water and poor food, he is an easy target for diseases. This is precisely why the poorest countries have the shortest life expectancies whole the longest life expectancies are recorded among the richest countries. Poverty is really a disease that shortens life.
Oduyele Abimbola Christiana, is a student Lagos State University.
