Poverty is an unbearable hell hole.
You wake up to no electricity. Or food. You go to bed hungry.
There is nothing to mitigate winter’s cold. You are tired of the continuous suffering. It is unrelenting. You long for a decent bath. Or shower. You long to feel clean.
You fear the dawn of every day because you have no way of coping anymore. Every coping mechanism has been depleted.
People use your story in media because they think what a wonderfully resilient human being you are. But it’s not resilience. It's remote control.
Your internal depletion is so deep that you no longer have the ability to navigate anything about your home, family and future.
You hold your hungry two-year-old on your lap but your own soul cries out to be held by someone.
You swear at people who stare at you because you have no more words left to tell them of this depletion you live with every day.
Your political leaders make promises. They drive to your community to meet the people. They don’t meet you. They only meet the ones who won’t embarrass them.
Deep in your soul, you know that they don't love you. Neither does the religious community. Or the NGOs. They only serve and work with the ones who “have potential”. Or who are faithful.
Your potential and faithfulness died a long time ago on the streets when rape and hunger and rejection made you into who you are today.
The politicians and NGOs and religious leaders don’t wish to listen to your rage. They want your compliance.
You want to scream and they tell you to be quiet. And you leave them because you cannot stand another silencing of your voice.
While all they want is your vote, your attendance and your tithes.
They will give you T-shirts and bread and invite you to music concerts but you need someone to love you enough to hear your rage and your pain and your sadness. But they don’t have time for you.
You are not the one they are there for. Because you know they don’t love you. Like everyone else in your life, they just use you.
You will never be invited to tell your story. You will never be asked to share your pain.
You won’t feature as a crisis issue to be addressed. You are the one they want to stay hidden. You will appear on their photos but not on their agenda.
And year after year, your poverty deepens. They want you off the streets. They want you to not burn tyres or set up blockades. They want you not to protest at their visits.
They want you to keep your neighbourhood clean. But they have never been so cold and hungry that you cannot think straight for three days.
They have never been so desperate to feed their children that they cannot help but sell their bodies.
They have never been so hopeless that drowning their minds and souls in daily drunken stupors is their only way out to stop the pain they feel.
This is how you know that they don’t love you.
Because they keep using words like responsibility and self-respect and dignity but they don’t know words like poverty and hunger and abuse.
There are days you long to hold a 10 cent coin in your hands. To feel the power of owning 10 cents. How hard can that be? But you don't even have that.
You are sick of the law. Of the pretence. Of the important politicians and their religious and NGO co-conspirators. They are the triumvirate of development.
They hold sway over your life. They pontificate about poverty in parliament, on pulpits and in papers.
But they don’t know your name. They don’t know your dead child’s name. They just go about portraying their power. While you live with your rage. Every day.
* Lorenzo A Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Do you have something on your mind; or want to comment on the big stories of the day? We would love to hear from you. Please send your letters to [email protected].
All letters to be considered for publication, must contain full names, addresses and contact details (not for publication).