Poverty: Is It A State of Mind? A State of Being? Or Is It Just A State? Part 1

A Study of My Life Of Poverty

Image by Annelise Lords

I learned the true meaning of poverty when I was seven years old in Primary school. It was at our annual Christmas party and each child would pick a name out of a box and our parents would buy a gift for that child. Joan McDonald picked my name. I think I picked hers too. She bought a three-tier red, black, and white glass set for me. My mother gave me a ball wrapped in brown paper. When it was time to exchange gifts, the teacher Miss Jones looked at mine, then at the one, I would get. She tore open my gift, shamed me in front of the class, and threw the ball in the garbage. That was more than forty years ago and it’s still written in my brain. That was my first taste of poverty. As I got older, I started to study poverty. I hate it. I hated how I was treated by humanity because I was poor. This essay is on my study on Poverty. It’s entitled

Poverty: Is it a State of Mind? The State of Being? Or is it just a State?

Was written in 2005 and updated in 2007, 2015, 2020, now again in 2024.

This essay is not meant to demean or harm anyone, especially the poor. This is not proven or supported by any psychologist. It is simply an observation of living a life of poverty among some of the people who say they are poor. The various organizations have been on the outside looking in. I am on the inside looking out.

Part 1

They say poverty is a crime. I say it is pain. It’s a state of mind, sometimes it’s a state of being, and other times it is just a state. They say education is the only way out of poverty. I say it’s the first and the most important step out of poverty. Education can’t stand alone. It plays a vital role and the lack of it plays the most significant role leading to poverty. Without the first step, there can’t be a second step.

A lot of educated people are poor. Studies by the Survey of Living Conditions by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica and the Department of Sociology at the University of the West Indies state that ‘improved educational levels do not significantly reduce poverty levels among urban youth.’

I see a lot of people here in Jamaica who can’t read or write, yet they own and operate their businesses. How? They hitch a ride on someone’s brain and they use common sense. Many poor people in Jamaica focus isn’t on education, it’s on survival. When a child is hungry education can’t feed us or pay our bills, not literally. Many Jamaicans think like that.

Mrs. Brown is 73, she can’t read, and neither does her mother. She has 9 children and four different fathers. She managed to hold down a job for 18 years as a housekeeper to a prominent lawyer. He never knew she couldn’t read. She left and started her own business, got married, bought a plot of land, and built her own home.

My aunt was told by my mother that she was a dunce when they had a quarrel once. My aunt /said, ‘Yes, I can hardly read in fact she is able to read better than me.’ Amazingly, my aunt had a long successful marriage owned her own home, operated a small business, and raised six children.
A lawyer, a nurse, an accountant, a teacher, a financial comptroller, and another one in business.

My smart mother who can read had nothing. And I mean nothing. Her children are struggling to find a life of their own and the little they have must first go to their children. Three out of her six manage to step away from her and are struggling to steady the wheel. She is dead now, but she is still helping the wheel to turn because of the decisions she makes affecting her children’s lives.

World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, various Government bodies, Charity Organizations, and everyone with a heart wants to do something for the poor. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he wants to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

That was nine years ago. Along with 180 countries, they have agreed to eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Halving extreme poverty and hunger is the first item on the list. July 27, 2016. The new UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon states in his Millennium Development Goals 2015 Report in his Foreword. “Further progress will require an unswerving political will, and collective, long-term effort. We need to tackle root causes and do more to integrate the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.”

In 2020, it wasn’t achieved. According to Bank Ki-Moon former UN Secretary-General, the MGDs failed because of lack of progress to ‘unmet commitments, inadequate resources, lack of focus and accountability, and insufficient interest in sustainability development.’

We are in 2024, poverty is being aided and abetted now, by the high cost of living.

Most persons want to help focus on the financial side, and not the psychological side. Poverty is deep-rooted in the minds of many poor persons here in Jamaica.
The late former South African President Nelson Mandela says, “Overcoming poverty is an act of justice, not charity.”

In Jamaica, wealth and poverty vary in the eyes of the poor. The person who walks thinks that he who owns a bicycle is rich. To the cyclist, he who owns a motorbike is rich. To the motorcyclist he who owns a car is rich and it keeps going up the ladder of success. Only some of us are faking it until we make it.

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it.