hope...

While being here I have found the issue of ‘poverty’ to be quite daunting. While reading ‘The East African’ (a local newspaper) I come across headlines that recite of the problems of food shortages, bordering warfare and rebel groups, failing crops, natural disasters, food price shocks, aid cuts and the problems of aid dependency. Moreover, studying the topic in school and seeing it on TV ads can dethatch you from the reality and humanity of it all. Even  here in Tanzania I am finding the magnitude of the issue and its reality very difficult to wrap my mind around.

Here in Dar es Salaam there is massive urban sprawl as many people are leaving more traditional lives in the villages to a more modern/western life in the city, only to realize it wasn’t all it was supposed to be. I have already personally run into several individuals and had conversations with them about how they came to Dar. All the youth say how “I came to find life”. This isn’t poor English but it is how they truly feel about life and opportunities back home: hopeless as if there is no life back home.

Many youth are leaving their families and farms to ambitiously follow their dreams of becoming rich and successful in the city discarding the humble village farming life. Furthermore, while speaking with some development workers from rural areas I hear that climate change and rainfall shortages are causing huge problems for farmers who are obviously highly dependant on their crop yields. I've learned many people often stick solely to corn as it gets a good price, but if the rains aren’t enough there is absolutely nothing to show at harvest time which is devastating. Furthermore agriculture employs 80% of the work force and accounts for 85% of their exports. When an industry that is so reliant on a variable like climate patterns  there is a lot of uncertainty in the lives of the poor who already live on the brink of livelihood.

When moving to Dar, these youth realize how few jobs there are and how expensive living costs are. So many find themselves homeless or move into slums around the city in small makeshift shelters forced into unstable and insufficient sources of income.  For example: when stopped at a traffic stop or caught in rush-hour traffic cars are swarmed with venders who are trying to sell goods anything from car seat covers and bubble gum to giant wall maps of Tanzania and cashews. What’s even more odd is how they all sell the same random assortment of things so that competition is more about luck than anything else. How can they make a livelihood off this is mindboggling. I am realizing many of them are not.

There are hundreds of thousands of people here in Dar who live like this. As I said, the actuality of poverty is incredibly complex and difficult for me to understand. The dilemma of worrying about where tomorrow’s food will come from is very real. Because of this its all to easy to be discouraged by numbers and headlines, see Africa as a lost cause and be overwhelmed. Many of us do this, not even just with Africa but with many problems the earth faces from homelessness, corporate greed, extreme poverty, broken economic systems, climate change … anything.

I’ve had to ask myself what am I, a white 20 year old from Vancouver Island doing here? What can I possibly do? What can any foreigner/aid/development worker possibly do? What place is there for good intentions in such a mess of a world?  Even with the thousands of experts studying these problems they cant seem to find solutions.

However, I am also realizing that this reality of poverty although highly complex as a massive interconnected cycle has to be addressed in small steps. If you can intervene in someway in the cycle than you can make a difference. Rather than being discouraged by the massive issues that we face we can look at the community level at families and individuals. Change happens in small steps no matter what you are trying to accomplish.

That is why the work that CRWRC and their partners are doing is so important. For example: I visited a project today and sat in on a micro-finance group made up of 7 women and 7 men some about 60 years old, some less that 20, some Christians, some Muslims. Together they are makings savings and pooling money together, out of which they are able to give out loans to each other so that they can purchase capital and get ahead in their business. For example one man took out a loan that allowed him to travel to the nearby city and restock his shop while another was able to purchase a motorbike to use as a taxi. These loans are not donated by the West, it is not even donated by CRWRC, it came from themselves. All they received was some education and guidence on how to manage a group like this and co-operate with eachother. There are many of these groups in many villages across the country, they have the potential, they have the recourses, they just need to realize it. 

If you can assist people from the villages in their work, you can make their life more sustainable, prosperous, and full. As a result you provide hope into a community and for their youth. They wont have to leave families behind and leave land uncultivated. I am not trying to confess that these issues are simple, but trying to show how true progress can and is being made.

There is hope, and its about uncovering the potential and capacity in every ordinary person, empowering them to realize that there is hope and there is room to grow. If we get caught up talking in about it and planning it, and have conferences and discussions and read books on it and pray about it but don’t do anything, then we haven’t accomplished much. Sometimes the solutions to these massive problems can be taken in small steps person by person and community by community. I am seeing this hope and I find it empowering for me, not exactly showing what I can do for people, but what any everyday person can do in their own life and in their own community (including you). I hope this provides hope for all of you reading too. Don’t be overwhelmed by the negative images we are presented with, but realize that beautiful things are happening and are so ordinary that they don't need news coverage.