So You Think You're Poor?
A raw look at suffering and how not all poverty is created equal
There is a place in Tanzania, Africa, and a girl who lives there. I’ve been to this place and I’ve met this girl.
The place is Kwa Mkono Disabled Children’s Center. It’s in Tanga, one of Tanzania’s poorest regions. It’s an orphanage and hospital for disabled children.
The girl, though I never got her name, is about 11 years old. When I met her, she was lying on a hospital bed in a dark room. Her hands, feet and legs were horribly disfigured, the privilege of walking clearly forever off the table for her. She was struggling through a bout of Malaria, having just vomited non-stop for days and only now beginning to recover.
Put yourself in her shoes, and think through this life with me.
Not only are you born in Tanzania, a third-world country—you’re born in Tanga, a rural region infamous for its droughts, floods, and subsequent severe poverty.
Your parents are either dead or long gone—to you, it makes no difference.
You can’t walk, and grew up dragging yourself around on the filthy floor while other kids ran freely—that is, until you arrived at the orphanage, where at least now you’re surrounded by other crippled children.
Every time you go outside the orphanage, strangers’ eyes linger on you longer than is comfortable, and you entertain no delusions about what parts of you they’re looking at and what they’re thinking.
You will likely never leave Tanga, and you will almost certainly never leave Tanzania. Even if you’re smart enough to eventually go to college, you can’t even hold a pencil or type on a keyboard—so what’s the use?
You will never own a car.
You will never buy a house.
You certainly will never travel the world, experience five-star dining, or own an iPhone.
For the rest of your life, every meal that you eat will be dependent on the charitable contributions of people you don’t know, and the immense self-sacrifice of the local Tanzanians who run the center.
Most heartbreaking of all, you have no family, and will never truly know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally by those who gave you life.
And then you get malaria in January of 2024, and though you beg for relief during the first bout of vomiting, you have no choice but to let the illness run its course over days. The fact that a random foreigner named Robbie walks into your room for 30 seconds and looks upon you with the utmost pity probably doesn’t even fully register.
You—not the girl, but you, dear reader—own a secondhand iPhone 8, drive a 1998 Honda Civic which is on its last legs, and are forced to live with roommates to save money on rent.
And you think you’re poor.
Note: This post is meant to be a sobering snapshot of the terrible realities that exist around the world for millions of people—it is not a fatalistic surrender.
Countless organizations, such as the one I partnered with, From Hearts 2 Hands, are working tirelessly to remedy these very problems. The people who run these organizations, and especially the local people who have dedicated their entire lives to helping children like the one recounted in this post, are my heroes.
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Thank you for sharing this.. Very challenging.