Miss Opportunity
on Colm in Kenya (Kenya), 28/May/2009 18:20, 34 days ago
Ok so imagine you listen to U2’s music regularly either by chance on the radio and tv or by choice on your i-pod. You ‘know’ all their music yet you’ve never actually seem them playing live, in flesh and bone.And then we you do go see them live, there’s something not quite right. It’s U2’s music alright, you sing with Bono all the words but there’s definitely something missing. Being there you cant quite put your finger on it but it’s just not what you expected.You go see them live on two more occasions and on the third time, you take time out to really try to understand what’s missing.Sitting in Chritine Tebu’s yard last Friday I realised what it was that was missing live. It was U2’s music alright but Adam Clayton was missing – no bass.This is what living with the poor is like.Through exposure to all sorts of media, newscasts, charity appeals etc. you create an image, a sound and a smell of poverty. When you live in it, you definitely see poverty almost as you’d expect but there is one vital aspect missing.Christine Tebu is 29 has tight short black hair, forever smiling eyes and dark black skin. She is married with 4 young children and lives in a village called Mfumbini close to Kilifi.When we visited her in her dusty yard outside her large mud hut, she was milling maize in something that looked like a wooden bin the size of traffic cone.She placed a long heavy wooden pole used to pulp maize down by her feet as she greeted us with a warm smile, slightly out of breath and sweating from her industry.Her barefoot children in their dirty, worn clothes played around her, giggling and pointing at the new white visitor. Christine hurried about finding us something to sit on, sending various chickens scuttling around in wild panic in the process. Her Husband was also working in the yard and stopped to greet us with a big smile and handshake.A typical warm Kenyan family welcome.During our conversation with her, where she explained how her illiteracy means she cannot keep records for her business, neighbours wandered past the open yard and share a quick joke with Christine and her husband.The family live on less than $1 a day so are officially poor which there was no doubting. But this was a young, happy family living in a friendly community seemingly unaffected by the poverty that swallowed them.I sat their confused, I see everything we have come to associate with poverty here in Christine’s family. But like elsewhere I’ve been in Africa there was something missing. It’s like staring into an unfinished portrait but not knowing which piece is missing. This is U2 but Adam Clayton was missing.Now I realise what Clayton is to Poverty. It’s misery. When you see poverty, you expect to see misery but you hardly ever do. I certainly didn’t see it in Christine Tebu’s yard.And this is really important.We imagine Africans to live in unbearable misery and we feel sorry for them, pity. Don’t! They’re as happy, happier than the sorry lot back on the island. The family, community and a brightness that Adam Clayton’s bass guitar could never represent, is here in an abundance.Whilst Christine talked in Swahili to my colleague, her eldest 9 year child, Rukia, took the wooden pole from her Mother and had continued the milling. In 20 years time this girl will probably be living in a mud hut milling maize with 4 or so children in tattered clothes like her mother and grandmother before her. In 40 years time her eldest daughter will be doing the same.None of the four generations will have say in this future. It’s a future pre-defined by poverty. They may all have happiness, smiles and laughter but like misery something else here is missing, as it was in the many other villages I’ve seen – it’s opportunity.The opportunity to choose a future you want and not to have one dictated by poverty. The opportunity to fulfill dreams, to develop and maximise what ever potential you have.Nine year old Rukia has a 30% of chance of ending up in the Child Sex Tourism trade, 10% chance of starting within the next 18 months i.e. before 11. She has a 28% chance of falling pregnant before she’s 18 and of all girls in Kenya, she is less likely to be literate. Her exposure to HIV/AIDS is also dramatically increased.It’s impossible to feel pity or sorrow for Christine, Rukia and their happy family. It’s equally impossible not to believe that this family, like so many others, deserves more.Is there a time for keeping your distance,A time to pull your eyes a way?Is there a time for keeping your head down,A time for getting on with your day?Miss Sarajevo, U2