What would you say is essential for life? Is it different to what is essential for a happy life? If one has a family, clean water, food, an education and somewhere to call home that provides protection and shelter from the elements then surely one has all the essentials for life? What more do you REALLY need? Is a house big enough so everyone can have their own large room really necessary? Is having enough money to buy lots of clothes and toys really necessary?
This summer I spent a month in Botswana travelling around and camping. I also spent a lot of time in the town of Maun. I’d been in Maun for about a week when my Mum rang to see how I was. She asked me ‘Is Maun a poor town?’ to which I said ‘I can’t answer that’. If you compare it to London then it’s poor, but there are thriving businesses, lots of tourism, houses, banks, hotels and a bustling market. I wouldn’t classify it as poor. Having spent a lot of time living in Africa I realised that my perception of poverty and what makes somewhere or someone poor had completely changed.
I no longer looked at the people living in the middle of the bush in small concrete houses with a separate hut for their toilet as living in poverty, instead I looked at their lives and realised they were just living simply. I watched as the children ran up the road to school. The younger children would play in the sand with toys they had made from what they could find. The elders would hunt animals for food and live off the land, often they would be playing cards, chatting and drinking. They all had running water and animals were kept to be used as food. There were even some businesses in this small town they had created. There were small concession stands that sold sweets and fizzy drinks. If they needed to get anywhere else they would walk or wait for the bus. Do they really need anything else?
I am most definitely not saying that there aren’t people suffering in the world that do live in poverty. There are people living in similar but worse places without clean water, or enough food, or a house large enough to fit them all in spaciously. The fact that there are people living in poverty breaks my heart. But what I do think is that as Westerners, we can be quick to judge things or people to be poor when in fact they are rich in other ways. Just because people don’t have a lot of material possessions does not make them poor. Often such people are richer in love and happiness than those who are surrounded by material things. We live in an extremely materialistic society surrounded by excess, so much so that maybe we forget the difference between what we want and what we need. Maybe living simply isn’t such a crazy concept?
By Victoria Gleeson
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