Monday, July 10, 2006

Back in Meheba

Being back in Meheba has reminded me of what it is like to live in poverty.
For the past several months I¹ve been reading and talking about poverty so
much that I forgot some of what I learned through first-hand experience.
Time and distance have a way of distorting your memory.

I remembered that people here are resourceful and innovative. Virtually
everyone is self-employed in one manner or another. Some people sell fried
dough, others sell vegetables and fruits they grow themselves. Some repair
bicycles. Some take photos. Some buy goods wholesale in cities and sell them
here. Everyone has skills and ideas for making enough money for the bare
essentials.

But I forgot how vulnerable many people here are ­ what a small difference
there is between having just enough to get by and not having enough to get
by. Bad luck happens to everyone in the world. You break a leg, you get
pneumonia, your bike or car breaks down, or you lose your job. But many of
us are lucky enough to be able to absorb shocks like this. People living in
poverty aren¹t about to absorb them.

I interviewed a woman two days ago who was applying for a micro-loan from
one of the FORGE projects. She greeted me in French, laid her hands together
on top of the desk, and listened closely as I explained began asking her
questions about herself in my out-of-shape French. She had operated her own
successful business just one year ago, which had generated enough money to
send her ten children to school and feed her family twice a day. Then, last
July, her hut burnt down with all her family¹s possessions inside, including
the capital for her business. During the cultivating season she had helped
her husband who has back problems and is blind in one eye to farm a plot of
land. They sold much of what they produced to pay for school fees for their
children, and now the dry season has arrived. They have no income and no
food. They have to borrow money and food from neighbors and friends to
survive. All she needs is enough money to start her business again ­
probably not much more than a couple hundred dollars.

Many people I have met here have similar stories. They remind me that
poverty isn¹t just an inconvenience; it deprives people of their ability to
use their resourcefulness and innovation. You can¹t make something from
absolutely nothing, no matter how talented you are.

For the next seven weeks I will be helping the team of FORGE ambassadors to
implement their projects here in Meheba. I hope that we can give at
Least some people opportunities to use their skills and knowledge o
stabilize their lives.

I am looking forward to starting PACE in August. Esther, the FORGE project
manager who has been here since February has told me some people have
already come to her with ideas for developing the community. That gives me
hope that PACE will really work.

I have been considering exactly were to implement PACE since I arrived. The
settlement is hug ­ about 600 square kilometers ­ so there¹s no way to do it
for the whole place. It seems to make more sense to focus on a particular
area of the camp. I am leaning towards an area called Zone F. The settlement
is split into zones A-H. Zone F is probably the most isolated, poor, and
neglected zones in the settlement. Before now there have been no FORGE
projects there, and many of the NGO workers in the settlement seem to be
prejudiced against them. The zone is inhabited primarily by Congolese, so
most people speak French or English, and everyone speaks Swahili, which is
great because I want to learn Swahili.