"The future is what you make it..." (Part 2)

Continuing my previous post, I noted that there were several characteristics of the poverty that I have seen so far in Kenya that have shown me that so much of our own successes are the result of factors beyond our control and, to a large extent, that we are not masters of our own destiny.

No reason to take a long-term approach

When I was growing up, my parents constantly stressed the importance of education and working hard (Yes, it's very stereotypically Asian). I knew that if I applied myself and strived to work hard at school and in other areas, I would probably achieve a certain degree of success. I essentially had a "roadmap to succeding in America" showing me that I should do A, B, C and avoid X, Y, Z. Furthermore, there were plenty of examples that my parents (or the Korean newspaper/radio) could point to, and eventually that I could identify on my own, to show this to be true.

I know that I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here since I have not actually "made it," but I'm pretty satisfied with where I am currently in life (God will probably humble me greatly for writing this). And although it required a lot of hard work, there were rewards along the way - whether it was approval from others or even financial rewards - letting me know that I was on the "right path." This roadmap, along with those intermediate rewards made it much easier to take a long term approach, eschewing certain short term pleasures for the bigger prize down the road.

However, for most of the children we have been working with here, I can't really see that they could be that successful even if they worked very hard. Even if a child wanted to excel at school, they would run into a corrupt system, finding out that their grade is based more on whether or not they are willing to have sex with the teacher than on merit. They would also find that the intermediate incentives to stay on a right path would be minimal or non-existant, especially in light of the larger issues that generally follow poverty - ie: how meaningful is it to get straight As when you must tend to your HIV+ baby brother that you alcoholic mother has been neglecting. Furthermore, there are few role models around them that they could look to as examples of success. Given a nebulous long term outlook, where even working hard and making the right decisions is unlikely to bear fruit, it is unsurprising that countless children get off the "right path" (if that path even exists).

In the past, I would look down on people who were lazy and went for quick pay-offs rather than striving towards a larger goal, but more recently, when I was living in East Harlem and now in Kenya, I see that the fact that I even had a "roadmap" to begin with and was able to prepare for my future was more a function of birth and not merit.

The extreme consequences of poor decisions

Moreso than the lack of reasons to make the right decisions, I was shocked by what happens when these people make the wrong decisions. People learn from their mistakes; it's a part of maturing and growing up. However, in many cases, due to the extreme nature of the consequences for poor decisions, people essentially do not have second chances.

3 examples:

One of the coordinators at CHI, who has lived in Africa for ~7 years told us that in some parts of Kenya, if you are caught stealing something fairly expensive, a guard will not hesitate to shoot you on the spot. I think that many people (myself included) have stolen something at an early point in their life, for which they were probably punished and then learned that it was wrong and not to do it again. Imagine if you had been killed or crippled because of that mistake

I also mentioned the Remand Center in an earlier post, that it houses children as young as 4 yrs to as old as 19 for crimes ranging from petty theft to assault. Imagine that as a 4 year old, not really knowing any better, you stole something off the street and ended up at this center. You would experience bullying, teasing, and much worse - sexual assault, molestation, etc. In short, you would be psychologically, emotionally, and physicially scarred for life because of a little mistake. Unsurprisingly, most children end up returning to the Center for another crime after being released.

Finally, given that roughly 70% of the people in this area of Kenya are HIV+, the consequences of poor decisions relating to sex are more likely than not fatal.Anywhere in the world, when children are growing up and reach a certain age (especially males), sex will occupy a significant portion of their thoughts and some will experiment. This happens everywhere - Africa, Asia, the inner cities of America, white-suburbia, wealthy private school kids, etc - but a major difference is that while the children of wealtheir families will probably not contract HIV (due to probability and sex better education) and have the chance to learn from their mistakes and regrets, the poor people here face an extremely bleak set of odds and consequences. The coordinator at CHI said that, "it's like playing Russian Roulette, except that 4/6 of the chambers are loaded instead of 1." Furthermore, for girls with more means and opportunities, if they happened to get pregnant, they could make their problem "disappear" and get a second chance. More often than not, the poor girl will likely have the baby and lose her childhood as a result. (btw, I'm not condoning abortion, just pointing out a major difference)

As successful adults, it is easy for us now to condemn those who commit crimes, have unprotected sex, or make other types of bad decisions, forgetting that we arrived at our current states by learning from our mistakes - which in itself is a luxury that was granted to us by factors outside our control. I used to think that the best way to battle crime was to institute harsher punishments - and this may be true in some cases - but now I also see that it is essential to have a system that offers second chances.

Spirit of poverty

I won't write much about the final aspect of poverty that I have witnessed here because I think it would be more controversial and I also have not been in Kenya long enough to digest this. By spirit of poverty, I am talking about how it seems that some of the poor have essentially "given up", and resigned themselves to the cycle - believing themself to be worthless and incapable. Hope is absent and help is in the form of the wealthy and capable foreigner.