Judging Poverty

How do I pull together the pieces of my week in the heart of the Lao countryside? When I sleep the glow of verdant rice paddies is still emblazoned in my mind and the aroma of steaming sticky rice, freshly harvested. But so too are the tired eyes of mothers, young women wrinkled and work hardened well before their time in an effort to keep their little ones full of rice. We travel to village after village, attend meeting after meeting, all full of disadvantaged people. We’re here to assess their level of poverty, their need of our assistance. “How many months in a year do you lack enough rice to eat?” and “Do you have any livestock?” and “What do you do when your children get sick?” Judging poverty.

Then we’re on to another village. By now it’s nearly dark but the children crowd around me and speak to me in quiet voices and I take picture after picture just to show them their face, maybe for the first time. These children are hungry. Their hair is tinged with orange and their bellies are swollen. I carefully record each of their ages in my notebook, sometimes doubling the age I initially guessed. “Who are you?” they say. “I am from Canada,” I say, but I’m met with blank expressions. “It’s close to America,” I say “have you ever heard of America?” The children shake their heads, “no”. By now their parents have gathered too and the meeting has started. The black night is lit by a candle, a bamboo torch, a fire. “Where do you get your water?” and “What do you eat when you run out of rice?” and “How do you irrigate your rice paddies.” Judging poverty.

I want to stay in each village for a week, a year, but as quickly as we come, we’re off again, flying over potholes into the depth of night. My head rings with the answers to our questions.

“We walk 30 minutes to the river to get our drinking water and to bathe and to fish, but the river’s running dry.”

“We have no water to irrigate our fields.”

“We collect food from the forest and sell rattan from the forest too,
but the forest is disappearing.”

“We can’t afford to take our children to the hospital
unless we think they’re going to die.”

“There are more people now than before.”

“There is less food now than before.”

They are poor. With enough time and resources, we could find work in each and every village we visit. As it is, we must judge the depth of their poverty and be selective.