Their BedsWere Made By Others:
The Causes of Poverty in the Third World
Trickle Up Poverty
I have all the time been deeply touched by the impact of poverty on both my own and others' lives. One's interpretation as to exactly what poverty is depends on one's country. Any way having grown up poor, I must confess it is harder to be poor in a rich country than in an underdeveloped country. This thought is confirmed by the fact that the poor in a rich country suffer discrimination which is difficult to bear because they are financially disadvantaged in a place where the rich are wealthier than in other countries. They have been brought up on fairytales and are bombarded daily by the media with success stories and the lives of the rich and famous. The poor in developed countries, the majority of whom are not in a state of absolute poverty, often find themselves in a situation in which they have to pay more for all things and are refused sure privileges because they don't fit sure financial criteria. As a supervene they end up having just adequate to scrape by or to furnish themselves with a sense of hope which rarely becomes a reality. Many grow old only to find that their "golden years" have turned into tin foil.
Discrimination against the poor in rich countries comes in many forms, but the most aggravating to me is the illogical conviction on the part of 'haves' who refuse to believe that poverty exists, and that a person can categorically be poor in a wealthy country. This being the case, when one says, "I have no money," s/ he is eyed suspiciously and often confronted with inane statements like, "Well can't you get the money from your 401K?" As for the rich, admitting to not having money is like confessing to not having air to breathe. Doesn't every person have money?
Conversely, in a Third World Country (Twc) the reaction to poverty in most cases is sympathy. In Kenya, I remember in telling my baby sitter that I did not have any money, which elicited the following response, "Well that's no sin." The next Monday on arriving at work she carried two large shopping bags of vegetables and said, "Oh, I know a man who will let you have milk and at the end of the month, you can pay him." When I asked her where she got the vegetables, she smiled and said, "From my shamba (farm)."
Since my return to the United States in 1993, I've heard so many uninformed comments about poor habitancy living in Twcs (I use the term Third World Countries because in most instances they cannot be seen as developing despite the decades of independence which they have experienced.) This is not necessarily their fault; they have been confronted with many obstacles.
The extent of the economic, structural and group degradation which has befallen countries like Kenya since my residency there in the 1960s is categorically stunning. I lived in the country during a duration of great hope and enterprise. Much like Montezuma who had a premonition about the fall of his empire, I was often burdened with sense of dread about Africa's future. Many in Kenya rejoiced at the passage of the White Paper in the Parliament, the repossession of the land in sure areas and its reassignment to African farmers, by the Kenya government. In my book, a fictional inventory of this era, "Kijani," I mention the elation of the habitancy on having attained independence and their visions of a successful future.
You cannot fantasize my astonishment on viewing a documentary titled, "The End of Poverty?" as it spanned the suburb of Kibera, settled on the outskirts of Nairobi. Later during the course of the documentary, a sweep of Arusha, Tanzania was also provided. To my faultless awe, I could not identify any part of whether location. As for Kibera in Kenya, I was dumbfounded to peruse that its residents were living in such crowded, squalid conditions that their makeshift housing was at the point of spilling onto the hasten tracks.
I remember that during my residency in Kenya I took a trip to Arusha, Tanzania by car. It is one of my most stunning memories. On our return trip to Kenya, our Ford Triumph broke down about 150 yards from a pride of lion and we all sat in the car trying to muster up adequate courage to get out. Meanwhile several Volkswagen Beetles passed us on the road. No doubt the drivers of these cars thought we were tourists interested in filming the lions. When we ultimately got out to see what the problem was, the lion stayed where they were and we were able to start the car without any threat from the pride. I tell you this to transport the fact that the area was in its natural state and slum free.
Many habitancy in the U.S., who know I've lived in Twcs, often ask me why it seems these countries never reach a point of self sufficiency. I could give a total reply to that request but I'd have to write a book. Beyond a doubt, the countries have moved from 'independence' to 'indigence' without ever stopping in between. But this is not a situation which is reflective of the inhabitants' lack of capability or their enthusiasm, but rather a situation that has its roots in the intrigues of former colonial rulers.
The first step which led to the downfall of approximately every African country's destruction was the migration of large numbers of habitancy from the rural areas to the cities. This pea-brained thought was another experiment in economic strategy. I was extremely frustrated by this initiative during the time of my residency in Kenya and I kept thinking, "Okay, so what are they going to do when they get here?" There was no housing. The increase in urban habitancy put a terrible strain on Nairobi's infrastructure. Why anything would listen to such a fanciful proposition was beyond me.
The second and equally ridiculous proposition was that of the 'trickle down' theory. Every dog and his fool know that wealth does not trickle down, only up. Like the Nile River, it only flows north. Base sense decrees that a person use the brain in case,granted to come to this realization. Colonization is proof of the failure of the 'trickle down theory.' If money trickled down then there would have been no poverty during colonization. This law is as silly as the one espoused in our History classes which states that Columbus went west to find a short cut to the East. Give us a break! I'm all the time on the alert to scout out inanity. At the age of nine I told my History trainer if that was so, Columbus was whether not a very good navigator or he was just plain stupid; she told me to shut up.
The third is equally damning. It proposed that the poor be given small loans to start a firm of some type. This endeavor has produced a myriad of loan sharks who have raised the interest on these mini loans so as to keep the borrower indebted for long periods of time.
The purpose of the small loans to individuals was to preclude the country from being straddled with debt it could not pay. Such a proposition sounds theoretically brilliant, particularly when you consider that the colonists on leaving newly independent countries, transferred their debts to the country. In increasing they burdened the indigenous habitancy with the task of producing the raw materials, but left the manufacturing of the terminated products to be done in Europe.
I am reminded of something Margaret Burke White said to Gandhi when he proposed burning the clothing imported from England and weaving cloth. She said she failed to see how this coming would solve the problem India was having. In supervene what she was saying was, until India could yield terminated products the meager efforts of habitancy weaving their own cotton for clothing would have slight impact on the economic pressures it imposed on it by the inability to yield terminated products and to participate in international trade. At the time India, like many developing countries, it was producing raw cotton and then sending it to Manchester, England.
The fourth was the matter of the colonial course on study for Africans. In Kenya, I also had a opening to speak to indigenous elders on a one-to-one basis. They had seen the British come and go. Their stay in Kenya had lasted only 75 years. One would have thought that during that time they would have trained the indigenous habitancy in subjects which would have proved useful. Instead they spent a lot of time on useless subjects. A Kenyan girl, whom I met in Australia many years later, confessed to me that much of her study under the British was useless, "Instead of teaching us things that we categorically needed to know, we spent a lot of time studying useless things like the discrete types of flowers grown in Europe." Well how outrageous is that? Kenya has a plethora of flowers which were unknown in Europe. Perhaps it is the British who should have been studying African flowers, as they are used for all types of corrective purposes.
I had an opening to talk to a British colonial, after Independence, he complained bitterly about the fact that since Africans had begun working in the bank, all things had slowed down. The British had a terrible habit of complaining to habitancy of color who were not African, about Africans, as though we would have been sympathetic. Fed up with such goings on, I turned to him and said:
There are 32,000 Brits in Kenya and 7,000,000 Kenyans. Did you seriously think you would rule forever? A father, whose wife has given birth to a baby boy, will teach him how to use the toilet, even though he does not expect his son will wear his pants.
The economic strategies of Western economists also played a essential role in contributing to the difficulty indigenous populations of Twcs had in their efforts get a stronghold on the development of their countries. While I agree with such supreme economists as John Perkins, Clifford Cobb, William Easterly, Joseph Stiglitz and others, I cannot help thinking, "Where in the hell have you folks been for the last 45 years? I have been struggling in my History classes since the 1990s to get students to grasp the thought and intrigues which lead to underdevelopment?" I guess I should be a slight less critical, because given the time span indicated, a whole of them may have still been in grammar school. In any event, that is how long I have known about the matters discussed in "The End of Poverty?"
I was in fact, fortunate to have had an opening to speak to the first presidents of a whole of African countries when they first gained independence. To this end, I was able to satisfy my heart-felt curiosity about many things and was later able to confirm my points of view while completing sure Master's degree papers, by saying, "I know such and such is true, because I spoke to the President of the country and he told me himself.
One bone of contention with the British professors I had was that for some suspect they all the time felt it was essential to challenge each student's statement. They were often outraged by my statement that Charles DeGaulle, who at the time of Guinea's Independence, was the President of France. When President Sekou Toure voted for independence as opposed to becoming a member of the French Union, it was decided to punish him. France had taken umbrage at his choice, and all things it had brought to Guinea as infrastructure was removed. So intent were they on removing any utilities in case,granted during their duration as colonial masters, that they even took the bulbs out of the road lights.
According to President Toure, three large ships pulled into the harbor onto which discrete and sundry materiel was loaded. When I mentioned this fact in my paper, "The attitudes of former colonial rulers towards the Independence of African countries," one professor was offended and demanded to know how I knew this, to which I responded, "Because Sekou Toure himself told me.
By the time I received my Master's in development Studies (M.D.S.) from an Australian University in 1992, I'd had overseas taste amounting to more than 24 years (10 years in Africa, and 14 years in Australia, and several years in other countries.) during this time I compiled a step-by-step strategy of how the Europeans colonized these countries undermined the cheaper and group buildings of the indigenous people. It is as follows:
How To Found a Colony
1. Find an interpreter
2. Negotiate with the head man
3. If this fails, find the enemies of the single sect or group
4. Stir up trouble/divide and conquer
5. furnish weaponry to one or both fighting parties Set sure conditions for continued trade or development assistance to one or the other (usually this comes in the form of the output of raw materials for the exclusive use of the colonizing country)Create a hierarchy of puppet officials as heads of local government, who answer only to the colonizing power
6. Employ the kiss, kiss/bang, bang coming by negotiating with those too considerable to fight (kiss, kiss) and threatening those too weak to resist (bang, bang)
7. Fabricate a law of slavery or group stratification premised on superiority/inferiority and dehumanization based on color or tribe
8. Pronounce classic weaponry by giving the oldest artillery to the colonized and keeping the most modern for the colonizer, ensure that supplementary supplies are ready only straight through the colonizer
9. Limit the whole of educated people.
10. Take off the capacity of the habitancy to become financially Independent
11. Restrict the right of movement by the indigenous
12. Population. This includes imprisonment.
13. Refuse the colonized habitancy a voice in court, or right to fetch in public
14. Pronounce all dissenters, terrorists against the government and punish them with death or long-term incarceration or isolation under conditions in which they cannot survive
15. Take off the habitancy from the choice areas of the country and place them in restricted areas, which are infertile and on which there is very slight water (Native Americans, South Africans, Kenyans and approximately all other colonized habitancy on the continent of Africa)
16. Criminalize all cultural practices, clothing and religion
17. Introduce taxation, payable only in the currency of the colonizing country, thus forcing the colonized to work for the colonizers
18. Prohibit independent industry by the colonized people, and deny free enterprise
19. Pronounce the colonizer's language and form of government and religion the only thorough models for society.
20. If the colonized refuse to agree to the above, stifle their senses with alcohol or drugs (Opium Wars in China/alcohol)
When one considers that the majority of colonized countries have undergone most of the aforementioned processes and at the moment are heavily indebted to large lending institutions, is it any wonder they cannot get 'a leg up.' overwhelming as it is, all countries on achieving their independence from the colonial powers, inherited the onus of the loans made by the European powers while they ruled these countries, in increasing to the loans required to stabilize their newly created economies. No sooner was this process underway than the small farmers and local mining fellowships were displaced by large American agricultural interests. This displacement combined with the fact that for as long as these countries were under colonial rule and right up to the gift day, they are bound to a situation where they yield the raw materials and the terminated goods are prepared overseas. To my amazement, I discovered that Germany, which doesn't have even one coffee bush, is the largest exporter of coffee. This means that the unprocessed coffee beans are sent to Germany, which does the final processing and then it is resold to Africa for consumption. It is antics like this and those mentioned above which have played a major role in destroying the economic development of Twcs.
Economic Inequality - The Rich Getting Richer, The Poor Getting Poorer
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