Poverty continues to let the African child down

‘I taught in a rural school somewhere in rural Eastern Cape, South Africa, and had a group of learners that were very fond of me and who shared stories about their lives with me. One day, one of my girl learners, who lived with her grandmother and brother told me how they used to actually eat air for supper.’ ‘My grandmother provides each of us with a plate and she tells us to act as though we are eating actual food and we scoop and swallow air with our hands, afterwards, we each have a glass of water and then go to bed. And teacher, we always get full,’ the learner said. This is how an educationist friend of mine told a story, last week, of her experience with poverty while she was teaching many years ago. She went on to explain how she later visited the grandmother of this learner and what she found: ‘I bought some groceries for them and when i got there, i found out that they lived in a very small hut (one-roomed) and that they had nothing except a blanket, reed placed on small rocks as mattresses, tins they used as pots and plates, and a kerosene tin lamp the girl and her brother used as light for studying.’

Is this good for the health of this child?
Courtesy of http://ministry2kenya.blogspot.com/2011/04/kenyans-pay-25-more-since-3-months-ago.html- 

Do we really understand what poverty is? Up to this point, i probably did not understand what poverty truly was and i thought that people living in shacks in a peri-urban area was probably the worst form of poverty there was. How wrong was I? All of us that were listening to this story agreed that there were a lot of African children that were going through this kind of experience, questioned whether these children would ever have a chance to break the cycle of poverty, and why the future of this continent was not accessing critical goods and services. The reality of poverty and the African child is indeed very chilling!

I personally think that we have failed our children- the future of this continent. Half of this continent’s children live in rural Africa where parents/ guardians cannot afford to take them to school, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has led to child-headed households, parents/ guardians are forced by circumstances to sell their children into slavery for hope of a better life, and the cases of child migrants are continuing to increase.

Is it acceptable that we have politicians that continue to look after their own interests instead of the electorate, and most importantly those of vulnerable children?

Is it acceptable to have leaders that continue to allow the prices of food and petrol to rise in ways that the rural poor will never be able to afford them?

Is it acceptable that the child in the story above got so used to eating air that she did not see anything wrong with it?

Is it acceptable that corruption is leading to the diversion of funds that bring education, food and other poverty alleviation tools to the poor in rural Africa?

Is it then the fault of us as a collective citizenry of this continent that our children are going to bed hungry because we are not holding our leadership accountable?

Is it then our responsibility to understand what poverty truly is and to lobby for provision to this continent’s children? But how do we do this in a sustainable manner and without disempowering our people?

These are all questions that we need to continue to ask ourselves if we are going to stop a cycle that is allowing our children to be robbed of a future that has been shaped for so many others in other continents.