The Poverty Cycle

The amount of crime the four Kenyan travelers, including me, will be exposed to is one of the unknown variables from this trip. We are going to be living in a city where we will immediately stand out because of race, our position as volunteers and accent (if not language altogether while we struggle with Swahili). The undercurrent of these differences is that we are from a richer country, one where we have access to money and power that many Nairobi youth would dream of having. These differences could make us become targets for some of the more unsavory parts of Nairobi, specifically theft and robbery. Just like my cousin Sean was a victim of this robbery on his first encounter with Nairobi more than a decade ago, so must we be aware of these dangers. But why does this happen in a city that is a haven for international tourism and a beacon of African growth?

The best reason for this might be poverty and the positions these people are in which perpetuates crime. Much of this can be attributed to a lack of education as well. All of this is due to the vicious cycle of poverty.

Low Surplus> Low Investment> Low Income

Low surplus money creates low investment in the future for families, which leads to low income that again creates a low surplus. But how can we break this cycle? Poverty is a complex problem that cannot be solved with one and done solutions. Maybe education can help fix it; maybe much of it has to do with the HIV/AIDS deaths that have happened in Africa over the last thirty years. Maybe it has to do with the global economic system or maybe all of these problems, and many others, are all part of the global cycle of poverty. And isn’t it amazing that Wal-Mart’s everyday low prices could directly impact people that live in Nairobi who I will live with for three months over the summer? These connections, though not direct, certainly are there. You just have to understand how complex the system is and why decisions made in the developed world effect livelihoods in the developing world.

Like my friend Brieanne mentioned in an earlier comment, this mentality very well could be survival of the fittest and that any high-browed attempt at looking down upon people that steal is easy to do because we do not know their situation. In a lot of ways, this is a correct view. It is like the old thought experiment: if you were starving, would you steal a loaf of bread in a market? To me, that is a tough question. I hope my morals would say no but I would think that practicality would win over and I would steal the bread. But if you include into that example a family that is dependent on you for food, I doubt there would be many people that would NOT steal the bread. So how can I really judge the people I will see in Nairobi who will be trying to take advantage of outsiders such as me? If I was in their position I would most likely be doing the exact same thing.

The poverty cycle traps families and gives them little hope of breaking free. As poverty is such a complex problem, it seems daunting, like you don’t even know where to begin. But I am going to start with one organization, Education for Life in Nairobi’s Kariobangi slums, and see where I can help. I hope to attack the poverty cycle by focusing on investment through education while in Kenya through volunteer work meant to build stronger, more sustainable communities. If enough people start looking for solutions to this larger problem, the smaller problems such as stolen possessions will diminish over time. Maybe I should prepare nonetheless, the city is still called Nai-robbery.

Nai-rob-ya

I will be living for three months in the slums of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya for the summer. To get myself ready for this trip I have been trying to learn as much as I can about the country, city and culture of the slums. One topic which has kept coming back up, from presentations earlier in the year of former Nairobi Beyond Borders alumni to hearing stories of people that have travelled to the city, is that Nairobi can be a bit of a pickpocket culture. Over the summer, I was in another of these cultures in Barcelona, renowned as a city that you can be robbed of your wallet or bag without even realizing. It didn't start too good; my traveling buddy Bruno got robbed literally within ten minutes of being in the city, wallet swiped out of his pocket getting on the subway. Even worse, we had both just reminded ourselves that we needed to be careful. We learned that lesson quickly.

This has given me some perspective to be aware of when I travel to Nairobi, a city that is called Nai-rob-ya or Nai-robbery, depending on who you talk to. I wish it was called Nai-(double)rainbow, but that isn't in the cards. Nevertheless, Nairobi's culture of pickpockets has a lot to do with the poverty in the city, its' increasing popularity for tourism, especially due to popular safaris, and a social infrastructure that is not strong enough to keep the majority of youth in schools, to which some might have to resort to a life of crime to make ends meet. Why does this pickpocket culture flourish in certain cities and not in others? What are the underlying factors that make Nairobi and Barcelona havens for these type of activites, from social systems to culture to economic factors?

I am going to do a lot of research on this topic this week, a project for myself to try to understand the situation I will be going in to. I want to know why Nai-rob-ya exists, what effect the city's poverty has on it, and what I can expect when I get there. But to leave you with one story that started this interest in Nairobi's dark secret, I will relay a story of my cousin Sean. He was in Nairobi about ten years ago for a photography trip. No sooner did he get off the plane did he look for a taxi and a fully dressed porter come up to him, offering to carry his bag. Though Sean refused, the "porter" hung around and as soon as Sean turned his back to talk to a cab driver, the porter grabbed several camera bags, going for the ones with the most expensive equipment, and if it wasn't for insurance, the $10000 price tag would have been a dark omen for the trip.

As I know from Barcelona, you cannot always be completely aware of your surroundings. I only hope that this preparation can give me the awareness for the unsavoury aspects of Nairobi city life.

Conor Brennan

Response to "Volun-tourism" Posts

Two posts by my classmates really made me question my thoughts on volunteering overseas as a means of development and what it will truly bring about for the future. The first was Nicole’s “Volun-tourism” post (http://livingbarefootnicole.blogspot.com/) and the second was Brile’s “Thoughts on Volun-tourism and Nicole’s Post (http://brileanderson.blogspot.com/). Nicole wrote on how a professor talked about his opinions of volunteering while travelling was doing a lot of damage to other cultures and “taints the rest of the world with our modern way of life”. This professor believed, in a later meeting with Nicole, that unselfish help doesn’t exist and the “helping” we are doing is actually damaging the communities we are travelling to. Nicole asked herself if her journey to India would damage these communities and whether her motives were selfish, similar questions I am asking myself.

Personally, my reaction to this view was anger. This professor seemed to have a very narrow minded view of volunteering and his definition of selfishness. True, a lot of volunteering overseas will do damage to communities because programs are not sustainable and they do not truly incorporate the people that live there themselves. From everything I have learned and that past students have told me, it seems that Beyond Borders is not like that because we work within existing structures that are there with or without our help. As far as selfishness goes, like Nicole astutely points out, learning and experiencing the world are selfish goals in themselves. But we will not end there. This trip is meant to be a period of personal development where the lessons learned and experiences gained will lead us to becoming global citizens that will understand global problems and look for innovative ways to solve them. We will not simply go on this trip, come back, say “holy crap, they have a lot of problems but the elephants were cool” and return to our bubble. If we do that, I will agree with Nicole’s professor completely. But if this “selfish” journey becomes a springboard to working with the developing world in whatever capacity to communally fix problems, then I would hope this professor could think again about his remarks about volun-tourism.

Brile also responded to Nicole’s post and took a very critical response about volunteering overseas as it “perpetuates a cycle of dependence of the developing country on the organization and developed countries”. Her example of programs that send teachers to a developing country at six months at a time is apt: they cannot connect with the students in a meaningful way until too late and it is a job that should be done within the country, if only they had the infrastructure to train, pay and monitor the teachers properly. Overall, Brile analyzes how complex of a problem this is and stresses the impact of the “cycle of dependence” this volunteering, aid and development work is creating and perpetuating. I think this is why volun-tourism is happening: it is leeching on to people who want to “help” while still appealing to Western youthful sentiment of “expanding your horizons”.

The same thing that I said to Nicole is what I believe is the only possible answer to this problem of Brile’s: the only possible end to the cycle is for people who know about the problem to learn as much as they can, experience what they can, and then use this knowledge to find a way to help. Just look at the fair trade movement. Does it make sense in economic terms to pay more for coffee in Canada? Of course not- but the people that started and are continuing this movement are hoping that a simple act of buying and drinking coffee can be part of the solution. We all have a hand in this, and I think despite the inherent selfish aspects of the journeys we are undertaking, ultimately we can put this experience to a communal good.

Beyond Borders "Community"

           The Beyond Borders class had a class today at the Working Centre in downtown Kitchener where we had a very interesting discussion about community, what the word means, what is derived from it and what community development means. It got me thinking about our group and how fourteen diverse people from all disciplines in the university wanted to have an international volunteer and learning experience. We range from math to arts, 19 to 22, shy to outgoing, reflective to outspoken. As community is based upon a Latin word that means people who live as one, a community is something that we are united together for or towards. This unification for Beyond Borders is based on each of our sincere interest in volunteering overseas and learning about the world through firsthand experience.

While reading Jim Lotz’s Understanding Canada and specifically Chapter One ‘What is Community Development?’ (http://www.theworkingcentre.org/wscd/pubs/understanding-canada.pdf), I pondered about the meaning of community and what it means. The fourteen of us that will be travelling around the world for the Beyond Borders program are friends that have a common interest to go overseas for three months but other than that there is no common interest amongst the fourteen students. However, this whole entire journey, including this term before the trip, is a learning experience and part of that are these blogs. On the right side of this page are the blogs of the other Beyond Borders students and the transformations that they are undertaking, getting ready for their placements. In these blogs lie our fears, excitement, interests and dreams of what our placements will be like. We are learning from each other and the support we are also lending each other is a solid system that we can rely on outside of friends and family for this journey. Blogging is not only an integral part of our mark; it is also a way for us to connect with each other. And we are all going to be provided with meaningful connections to people and real stories in the third world, connections which we will be providing you as well.

This is the power that the written word offers us, a power that we too often overlook. I was reading the assigned chapter for class and was trying to think about how this actually helps people build community. One of the examples in the chapter was a community in Nova Scotia that enticed Michelin to build a factory in this small town to build tires. It created jobs and was generally positive, yet the competition engendered by this decision of Michelin to build the factory in that community rather than a similar one down the road or in New Brunswick is a negative that we too often overlook. Competition is a necessary evil in our capitalist world. We are always competing for limited resources. I just hope that my blog will be an example that everything is not solely about competition, it is also about cooperation. I am putting a lot of time and effort to go on this trip for the opportunity to learn together with people in Kenya. I am not going down to teach them or be taught but to communally find a common ground between us and search for a better way to live. I just hope that you, as a reader, read this blog and my fellow Beyond Borders students’ blogs, as sources of inspiration for finding a community you can believe in and fight for. I aim to build meaningful connections and write about them, what they mean and how I can learn from them. If you learn as well, maybe the Beyond Border's "community" concerned with volunteering overseas can be expanded.