The Relativity of Poverty (October 25, 2006)

Anne and I were discussing the other day how we are often shocked by how normalized poverty becomes the longer we stay in Busia. For example, we are so used to seeing malnourished children with huge potbellies that we find ourselves surprised when we see well-nourished children. We are so used to seeing villagers with no shoes and worn clothing, that when people are dressed nicely we are a bit surprised. To be honest, I sometimes forget that Busia is the 2nd poorest district in all of Kenya. Additionally, if I never left the main road or the town, I would probably never realize that this area is desperately poor.

From the MSF perspective, we had a long conversation with some of the doctors about how people in Kenya are (relatively) rich compared to other areas of Africa, particularly West and Central Africa. Amaya, one of the on-site doctors, explained that, "When I came here I thought people were rich. They had shoes, they had clothes. It was completely different from the Congo.[her last post]"


These anecdotes underscored for us the relativity of (perceptions of) poverty. While there is a general threshhold below which everyone considers people to be living in poverty, within that definition it is alarming to see how quickly we become desensitized and accustomed to seeing lives governed by a under-resourcing. This idea of separating the poor from the very poor is common in development discourses, and I guess it is not unusual that we try to rank and categorize levels of poverty in our own heads.

That said, I don't think this idea of relativity and categorization speaks to the idea that poverty is in the eye of the beholder. Conversely, I think it speaks to how the human psyche adjusts to situations of duress and how we try to order, prioritize, and make checklists of the world around us in an attempt to feel like we are actively thinking and by extension, acting. At the same time, becoming more comfortable or used to these scenes is both a coping mechanism and a bit of a trap. The more complacent you become or the more normal it seems, and the more difficult it is to stay grounded and to keep a critical perspective regarding measures of poverty and livelihood. As poverty begins to seem more normal, the lack of access to health resources, education, jobs, etc., begins to seem like "part of the package." The normal things become, the more difficult it is to think of alternatives, solutions, and services. At the same time, I think it makes your heart a little more steely. I find that I engage much more with my head when I become used to a situation, and much less with my heart. This emotional distance is in some ways helpful, but in other ways incredibly cruel. It removes completely the human element, passion, and drive behind why anti-poverty programs and measures are necessary and urgent. In effect, it removes that sense of urgency.

I suppose the only thing we can really do to stay grounded is to continue to remind ourselves of the realities on the ground. To a certain extent, for me this involves continually reorienting my lens and really focusing on "keeping myself in check," so to speak. It's much harder than I thought it would be, and I think part of it is an element of immersion. Whereas in the U.S. it is relatively easy for me to look at the spacial segregation of socioeconomic communities and see the disparities, in Busia there is not a high level of income inequality to point to. While this may not be the case in one of the cities, or in Kenya as a whole, because Busia is in many ways "my world" here in Kenya, there are no vantage points with which to compare things.