Poverty has a home in Africa – like a quiet second
skin. It may be the only place on earth where it is
worn with unconscious dignity. People do not
look down at your shoes which are caked with
years of mud and split so that the toes stick out.
They look straight and deeply into your eyes to see
if you are friend or foe. That is all that matters. To
some extent, I think that this eye-looking, this
intense human awareness, is a reflection of the
earth all about. There is no end to the African sky and
to African land. One might say that in its vastness
is a certain kind of watchfulness that strips man
down to his simplest form. If that is not so, then
there must be some other, unfathomable reason for
the immense humanity and the extreme gentleness
of the people of my village.
Poverty here has majority backing. Our lives are completely adapted to it. Each
the day we eat a porridge of millet in the morning; a thicker millet porridge with a piece
of boiled meat at midday; and at evening we repeat breakfast. We use our heads to
transport almost everything: water from miles and miles, bags of corn and maize,
and firewood.
This adaptation to difficult conditions in a permanently drought-stricken country is
full of calamity. Babies die most easily of starvation and malnutrition: and yet, within
this pattern of adaptation people crowd in about the mother and sit, sit in heavy
silence, absorbing the pain, till, to the mother, it is only a dim, dull ache folded into
the stream of life. It is not right. There is terrible mindlessness about it. But what
alternative? To step out of this mindless safety, and face the pain of life alone when
the balance is heavily weighted down on one side, is for certain to face a fate far
worse. Those few who have, are insane in a strange, quiet, harmless way: walking
all about the village, freely. Only by their ceaseless muttering and half-clothed
bodies are distinguishable from others. It is not right, as it is negative merely to
strive for existence. There must be other ingredients boiling in the pot. Yet how? We
are in the middle of nowhere. Most communication is by ox cart or sled. Poverty
also creates strong currents of fear and
anxiety. We are not outgoing. We tend to
push aside all new intrusions. We live and
survive by making as few demands as
possible. Yet, under the deceptive peace
around us, we are more easily confused and
torn apart than those with the capacity to
take in their stride the width and the reach of
new horizons.
Do we really retain the right to develop
slowly, admitting change only in so far as it
keeps pace with our limitations, or does change descend upon us as a calamity?
