What we don't see at home: an observation

Although not directly related to my current project, I was inspired to write this after walking through the vibrant market in Kisumu's town center.


The media images of Africa we receive in the U.S. usually depict nations of violence, failed states, and poverty. I'm not going to argue that mass violence and failed states don't really exist in Africa- they do. However, the images of poverty we receive often portray Africans as helpless, as beggars. When you receive solicitations from charities, whether on TV or through church, what kind of images do you usually see? The wide eyed, crying child staring at you with sunken eyes, and only you can help. In this post, I hope to paint a slightly different picture of what this poverty looks like. I don't claim to speak for anyone, nor be an expert on anything related to the cause of Africa's poverty; these are only my observations and I've only spent extended time in one African country- Kenya.

When you walk through the main bus stage of Kisumu, considered Kenya's fourth largest town, you see shops selling goods of all kinds, from wrist watches to lightbulbs to sardines. Hawkers walk around selling cds, t-shirts and snacks for people about to travel a distance. You can buy a pineapple to take home, or a piece of pineapple if you're on the go. The amount of choices and products is dizzying. If you want to buy shoes, there are vendors selling second-hand high heels, others selling shoes locally made from tires, and still others selling flip-flops, locally called "pati- pati." No two vendors are alike. I'm sure that most of the these businesses got started with little initial capital, let alone access to credit. Most vendors probably make some profit, but not much in a cash strapped economy, and most probably fall into the category of "poor." Still, the small shops show initiative- a far cry from the image of the wide-eyed, begging child.

Those who have formal employment are considered lucky, as Kenya's unemployment rate is rumored to be around %50; according to my host father, "getting a job in Kenya is hard labor." From the looks of the work, from mechanic to waiter to cashier, formal employment looks like it would provide a more comfortable livelihood and be a little easier thank hawking soda to passerbys. This is sometimes true, but not always the case. My friend provides a stark example of this. He worked at a Nairobi supermarket cashiering. On the surface, cashiering doesn't look too strenuous. Yet in order to maintain employment and earn enough to get by, he worked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. For less than $200 a month. Add a two hour commute in the morning and a one hour commute at night, and what left do you have for sleep, let alone anything else? Such examples demonstrate how hard people have to struggle to earn income- but again, that they are not helpless, waiting for charity.

Efforts in the rural areas of Kenya, where most Kenyans live, also show how people are far from helpless and have their own initiatives to improve their livelihoods. In the village where I stay, a widow's prayer group has become an NGO that serves 2000 orphans and numerous widows in the community and surrounding area. The group receives aid from foreign donors, but the vision and direction originated locally. The group has no paid staff, but relies on a handful of volunteers. In rural Kitui district, where I stayed last year, the self-help group I interned constructed a building for income generating purposes entirely with their own hands, from the brickmaking to laying the foundation with stones carried one by one from a nearby stream. According to the 2006 Kenya Human Development Report, the GDP per capita in Kitui district $312/year- not even a dollar a day for the average person. And still, people in this self-help group, mostly women and old men, found a way to work under the hot, dry Ukambani sun for the betterment of their community. Helpless? I think not.

So is Kenya poor? If poverty is defined as living on less than $2 or less than $1 a day, then yes, most Kenyans are poor. To clarify, I'm not arguing that aid, from foreign governments and private donors, wouldn't benefit Africans. If managed properly and with grassroots input, it can in many circumstances. I'm only arguing that, from what I've observed, poverty doesn't look like what we think it looks like in Africa. In the U.S., many of us like to believe that with hard work comes prosperity and social mobility. Yet most Africans work very hard without the comforts that many of us have and get little more than the very most basic needs- if anything at all. The efforts of people here demonstrate that most poverty- in Kenya, the U.S. and elsewhere- is not caused by a lack of initiative but by complex factors beyond the average person's control. And the initiatives that do exist in the midst of a lack of opportunity and resources are all the more admirable.