During my two years in South Africa I lived with a host family in a rural village. My host family was the best part of my Peace Corps experience. Despite our disparate backgrounds, we connected on a soul level, on that human level that exists beyond the innocent interference of culture or even language. This intimacy revealed itself at any variety of moments, but a shared look of amusement or perplexity or grief is all it took. Connecting in this way was incredibly exhilarating; it proved the existence of a realm where our usual tools to describe reality no longer have relevance. All those adjectives that could distinguish my host family and me became utterly meaningless: black, white, South African, American, poor, rich...and simply fell away in place of a more accurate adjective: human.

In South Africa I learned how to speak frankly about race and racial tension. I learned how to provide practical insights on American culture to counter the glamour and violence of popular American TV shows, movies, and music. But poverty was tricky. I never considered my host family to be living in poverty, but I know that some of my possessions and actions probably labeled me as “rich”. I had a digital camera and I traveled to Cape Town on vacation. An animal lover, I spent money on cat food not only for my pet but also for the other stray felines who had found their way to me.   Read more...

There is a certain beauty in poverty. A voyeuristic feel when we walk through the slums, the markets, the squares of poor places. The colors, the vividness, the loud talks and flirts with vendors. A sense of being alive. Being able to spend a whole day, buying little things we don't need, just to stay there, drowned in the sensation.

I don't want to know what is behind the facade of smiles. I don't want to know the story of the little kid selling me peanuts. I want to see that beautiful picture, the surface. Only that.   Read more...

The issue
A household is considered food secure when the family doesn’t live in hunger or fear of starvation, so food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. Poor households often have a consistently difficult time affording quality food and typically end up with poor diets characterized by lots of starch and refined sugar. And as one expert put it, “…it's fair to assume, these people are not loading up on brown rice and quinoa [an organic grain]. So, we're talking about empty calories that predispose people to becoming overweight and definitely increase the risk for heart disease and diabetes.”   Read more...

What comes to mind when one hears the word poverty?

Scarcity, shortage, paucity, deficiency, dearth are words that are in the Thesaurus. Yet, the word confuses me in the way it is commonly used.

I live in Sri Lanka, a developing country with GDP of about US $1,000 per capita. In western terms, this is a poor nation. I became a resident of Sri Lanka in 1988 having lived in Canada for 15 years. Economically, Sri Lankans have less material wealth than an average person in the west. In happiness, I am not sure.   Read more...

October 14th is a significant anniversary. On this date, the Peace Corps was proposed by then-Senator John F. Kennedy. On Tuesday, the Peace Corps will be 48 years old. In its time, the Peace Corps has sent nearly 200,000 volunteers around the world to fulfill its three-point mission:

• To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

Poverty is such a pregnant term. Probably the first image that comes to mind is physical. We can so easily visualize people alive, but virtually skeletons. Sadly, thousands today are burdened with malnutrition and the anguish of not knowing where their next meal will come from. In the mind’s eye it is easy to envisage beggars, shantytowns, inner city slums, and refugee camps. Associated with those come images of crime, violence, and danger. In fact, who anywhere can say they live in safety?

But there are other less apparent dimensions of poverty, too. Emotional, for example. How many people live in the abyss of emotional starvation? How many cover up their echoing hollowness with excessive drug use, selfish sex, constant stimulus, violence, or greedy relationships? How many live in the grip of existential loneliness and despair?   Read more...

Poverty in Africa is predominantly rural. More than 70% of the continent’s poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food an livelihood, yet in recent years, many rural areas have suffered from a decline in the capacity of agriculture to provide livelihood for their inhabitants and development assistance to agriculture is decreasing. In sub Saharan Africa, more than 218 million people live in extreme poverty.

In many African economies, the rural situation is characterized by continuing stagnation, poor production, low income and increasing vulnerability of poor people. Lack of access to markets is a problem for many small scale enterprises in Africa. The rural population is often isolated beyond reach of safety nets. They are vulnerable to diseases like HIV/AIDS which has put an unbearable strain on poor rural households where labour is the primary income earning asset. In addition, health care services are often inadequate or non-existent.   Read more...

Glenn Kibble my Thermodynamics lecturer at the Seneca College Mechanical Engineering course in Ontario back in 1980 said there are three “T”s in life. Thermodynamics, Tennis and the other “T” he got away with as it was an all male class.

At that time I was mostly interested in the unmentionable “T”, yet I took the fundamental nature of the thermodynamic laws to the existence of our physical universe for granted as true. However, as I live a life of inquiry, study human nature and spirituality I am beginning to question the laws of thermodynamics as final scientific truths.   Read more...

The current financial market troubles have led me to look more closely at our economic ideas and rules. Capitalism is based on so called growth, which means the economy is stuck if you don't grow or if it grows too slow. In a certain way it makes sense: if you sell more you can enjoy more material things, which generates more spending and therefore more money for others as well. That way a huge amount of people benefit from those 100 USD that you spend. Even if you just put it in the bank it contributes to society because the banks can't stand the temptation of writing a loan to the first person who wants to buy anything ... even an overvalued house.

Here's the problem with investments: If the market for cars will grow 10% next year as the economy is going well (this is not now by the way) and every car maker wants to own those 10%. For that they need to invest heavily in marketing, production, etc. So as everybody is investing to grow faster than all the others, the market has to grow 20% to justify the total investment made by the sector ... so big surprise ... many are going to loose money. That's capitalism: everybody borrows money in the wave of positivity and greed and then ... what a surprise, the growth wasn't sustainable!   Read more...

Muriel Lester, tireless peaceworker, wrote, “The job of the peacemaker is to stop war, to purify the world, to get it saved from poverty and riches, to heal the sick, to comfort the sad, to wake up those who have not yet found God, to create joy and beauty wherever you go, and to find God in everything and in everyone.”

Only that?   Read more...