Tag: Living With (But Not In) Poverty Page 2 of 8

This is Why I Buy Used Stuff

On November 13, 2020

The other day at Costco, I saw a woman with a CrockPot in her cart. I was tempted to run up to her and say, Do you know how easy it is to find one of those used? I refrained, of course. People already think I’m weird enough. So instead I just write about it on my blog.

But I know this first hand because I recently was on a quest for a CrockPot myself. I got a like-new one at a thrift store for $12, but there were dozens on OfferUp as well. I had my pick of the CrockPot litter.

It has become a hobby of mine to buy used stuff as much as possible. It’s fun, but there’s more to it than finding a good deal. Here’s why it’s important to me:

It’s the easiest way to shop ethically. Since so much of what we buy originates overseas, I don’t need to worry as much about which brands are using slave labor if I buy things used. This is especially true for clothing, which is often produced in Bangladesh, India, or China in horrifying conditions we wouldn’t wish on our greatest enemy. If we care about human rights, this should be important to us.

People Are More Important Than Monkeys

By Amy Medina

On November 13, 2020

In How Americans Think, Poverty

So apparently it’s a problem to have monkeys harvest your coconuts. Costco and Walmart have announced that they are no longer supplying a certain brand of coconut milk because the manufacturer in Thailand chains up monkeys and makes them climb coconut trees.

I must admit I’m struggling to understand this. Sure, I’m all for not abusing monkeys; no animal should be needlessly harmed. But is it abusive to make monkeys climb trees? Apparently it is, since Costco and Walmart have gravely announced that this isn’t about just better conditions for the monkeys; no, they will not sell this coconut milk until the company uses human harvesters.

Um, have any of them ever climbed a coconut tree? Do they realize how dangerous it is for humans? Apparently these executives didn’t read Curious George when they were growing up, because they must not realize that monkeys are perfectly suited for climbing trees. So putting a human’s life in danger is less important than making sure monkeys are able to roam free? Better not tell all those cows and goats and donkeys, all around the world, that they should be standing up for their animal rights and refusing to work for humans. In that case, apparently we shouldn’t be forcing all those chickens to lay eggs for us either.

I Don’t Deserve Your Sympathy

By Amy Medina

On April 6, 2020

In Poverty

Leaving Tanzania suddenly was probably the most stressful experience of my life. Selling everything in our house, trying to get Johnny’s visa processed, having flights and airports closing around us, and worrying about all the people and responsibilities we would be leaving behind–all in a period of a few days–just about broke me. There were times when I found myself shaking uncontrollably or simply immobilized by the inability to think clearly.

But there were moments during that week–and even more so now that it’s over–when I am overwhelmed with how much privilege was connected to this sudden departure.

Yes, my stomach was in knots. But never once did I worry that my family wouldn’t have enough to eat. Yes, there was tremendous grief in being given a mandate to leave. But never did I feel my life was in danger. Yes, the trip probably exposed us to the virus. But I knew we were headed to a country with high quality health care. Yes, it was hard to find open flights. But I could afford to buy tickets on those flights. Yes, the trip was exhausting. But we had in-flight entertainment and a night at an airport hotel. Yes, I was forced to leave my home and return to a place that doesn’t feel like home. But I had a passport to let me in.

In contrast, consider India. When the government put the country on lockdown last week, stalling all public transportation, hundreds of thousands of migrants started walking back to their home villages over one hundred miles away. People who scratch out a living of five dollars a day, walking. No money, no food for their journey. Sleeping outdoors. Many of them with children.

Yes, “shelter in place” isn’t much fun. Like the rest of America, Gil and I are struggling with our kids’ online learning while trying to do our own work. Our kids are climbing the walls. We are bored. We’ve been on quarantine so it’s been a challenge to figure out how to get more milk or find a protractor so that Josiah can do his math. Yet again–I have no worries of going hungry. Zero worries. Sure, we are 8 people sharing three bedrooms, but my parents’ house has 24 hour electricity and running water. Friends have brought us homemade pizza and root beer and ice cream, and a protractor for Josiah.

In contrast, I think of Uganda, also on lockdown. I think of families with 10 people sharing one room. Not one bedroom, one room. Little to no electricity. Their daily water supply costs a quarter of their daily wages–yet now there are no daily wages. We stress about boredom; they wonder about survival.

Yes, Gil and I are worried about the future. In three months, we will be unemployed. We’ve been applying for jobs at Christian schools, yet no one is confident of enrollment for next year, no one even knows when schools will open again, so everyone is reluctant to hire. Our future–where we will live, what we will do–is a big black hole of unknowns. Yet again–I have zero worries about going hungry. I have zero worries about ending up on the street.

In contrast, I think of how the tourism industry in Tanzania has come to a screeching halt, leaving hundreds of thousands without jobs. I think of the names and faces of Tanzanians I know–friends I have shared life with–who are now jobless due to so many foreigners leaving the country. But unlike Americans, they can’t apply for unemployment benefits. Or even welfare. Or even food stamps.

I don’t deserve your sympathy. They do.

I’m not saying that we didn’t need your prayers or concern, because what we went through was really hard. I’m not trying to minimize my grief. The trauma my family experienced in being yanked from our home is very real. The anxiety about our future is tangible. I am grieving, and going through all the stages right now–denial, guilt, anger. I’m not trying to minimize the hardship of millions of Americans who have lost jobs, who are facing uncertain futures. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t mourn the loss of the thousands of Americans who have died in this crisis.

But I do think that there is room for gratitude in my grief. Enduring a pandemic as a citizen of the richest country in the world–as difficult as it is–is still filled with privilege. My kids get to continue school. My country’s health care system is strong. My family has several safety nets in place if we continue to be jobless. Sure, it might not be our first choice–living with extended family, public school…but we won’t starve. That is a privilege.

Grief is healthy, so I’m not trying to squelch it. My losses are real. But choosing to find gratitude alongside the grief keeps me from spiraling into self-pity or despair. I could question why so much has been taken from me. Or I could question why I have still been allowed so much. The contrast makes all the difference.

Johnny visiting the cockpit of our last flight to California

What Your Grandmother’s Piano Had to Do With Slavery in Zanzibar

By Amy Medina

On January 12, 2020

In How Americans Think, Race and Diversity

In Victorian America, having a piano in your home was a sign of being cultured, sophisticated, and educated. Ironically, the story behind those pianos was one of slavery, oppression, and death.

“By 1900 more than half of the world’s pianos were made in the United States. In 1910, piano production in the United States was growing at a rate six times faster than the population.” (1) Yet before the advent of plastic, what was essential for piano production? Ivory. Ivory from East African elephants.

Just over 100 years ago, there existed a unique connection between Victorian New England and Zanzibar, which is a large inhabited island just off the coast of what is now known as Tanzania. America wanted ivory. Africa had elephants. And the port where thousands of tusks funneled through was on the island of Zanzibar.

Most of that ivory ended up in Connecticut, at a manufacturing village appropriately called “Ivoryton,” which milled an estimated 100,000 elephant tusks before 1929. At the industry’s height, over 350,000 pianos were sold each year. (2)

I’ve lived in Tanzania for sixteen years, and visited Zanzibar many times, and I never knew this until I recently explored the new museum attached to David Livingstone’s church. I knew that Zanzibar was home to a massive slave industry in the 19th century; I knew that missionary David Livingstonewas instrumental in ending that slave trade. Many times, I have visited the church he had built on the site of the slave market, with the altar placed strategically on the spot where slaves had been tied up and whipped.

But all this time, I didn’t know there was a connection between East African slavery and America, because most American slaves came from West Africa. (East African slaves were usually sent to Arab countries and colonial British plantations.) Yet the Connecticut ivory industry fueled a large part of East African slavery. Each of those 100 pound tusks had to be carried, by hand, for hundreds of miles from the African interior. The journey was so grueling, and the slave drivers so cruel, that David Livingstone once estimated that 5 slaves died for every tusk.

We all know about slaves coming out of Africa. What I have also recently learned, both through reading about the rubber trade in Congo and now the ivory trade in Tanzania, was that hundreds of thousands of Africans were enslaved in their own homeland. Though it is certainly fair to say that most of these people were captured, owned, and sold by their fellow Africans, it was the the insatiable desire for Africa’s resources by Europeans and Americans that fueled the demand for doing business in human souls.

I imagine early 20th century Americans, gathering around their new pianos in their prim and proper Victorian parlors, gaily singing Christmas carols while the snow silently falls outside. It’s the quintessential American picture, is it not?

Yet what was the cost of that picture-perfect scene? I haven’t mentioned the mass destruction and near extinction of African elephants–which is a tragedy in and of itself. But even more tragic was that those pianos were built on the backs of suffering and death of countless African men, women, and children.

Did average Americans know this at the time? Probably not. But thinking about this tragedy made me contemplate what this generation of Americans does know. We’ve all heard the reports, right? Our cocoa and coffee harvested by children in developing countries, the profit from the tantalum in our cell phones used to fuel civil wars in Africa, designer clothes created by near-slave-like conditions in Bangladesh or India. So many of the comforts around us were built on the backs of someone else’s suffering.

What do we do about it? I hear you asking. And honestly, I don’t know. The problem is incredibly complicated. I don’t have answers.

Yet, knowing these things is still good for our souls. This knowledge should humble us, convict us, make us wiser. It should help us to be more careful in what we buy. More aware. More generous. More grateful.

The Anglican church in Zanzibar which was inspired by David Livingstone’s fight to end slavery on the island. The church is built on the site of the main slave market.

Under the church, two holding chambers have been preserved. Each of these chambers would hold up to 50 slaves at a time, waiting for sale.

“This crucifix [is] made from the wood of the tree under which Dr. Livingstone died at Chitambo village, Ilala, Zambia in 1873, and under which his heart [is] buried.”

My sources for this article came from the museum at Livingstone’s church, as well as these two sites:

(1) Connecticut Explored: Ivoryton

(2) Ivory Cutting: The Rise and Decline of a Connecticut Industry

All pictures by Gil Medina.

How to Help Your Kids Become Poverty Fighters

By Amy Medina

On November 17, 2018

In Operation Christmas Child, Poverty

“Do you want to play with me?” “Yes!” (Drawn in a Service Learning journal by a second grade HOPAC student.)

Just last week, my friend Trudie sat in my office at Haven of Peace Academy. Every year at Christmas, our elementary school kids participate in a gift collection for a local charity. Trudie coordinates our Service Learning program at HOPAC, and as she and I discussed the various options for this Christmas, I heard these words come out of my mouth:

I’d really like the students to be able to donate stuff, instead of just raising money. For young kids, donating stuff is so much more tangible than money.

I know what I’ve written before. Don’t write me off as a hypocrite just yet.

But I’m telling you this story because I want you to know that I get it. I’m the mom of four kids. I’m the principal of 150 kids. Every single one of them falls into the category of “economically privileged.” And just like you, I’m always looking for opportunities to teach them to be grateful, compassionate, and generous.

So I get it. I get why it’s so cool to take your kids to Target, help them pick out gifts for an under-privileged kid a world away, write a note, pack the box together, and pray over it.

But this is the key question we must ask ourselves:

Are we only interested in teaching our kids generosity and compassion, or do we want to raise them to really, truly make a difference in fighting poverty?

Think about it. Filling a shoebox (or other charity gift programs) is sending the message to our kids is that donating “stuff” fixes poverty. That what poor people are lacking and what we need to give them is stuff.

But what if all that stuff we’re donating in order to teach our kids compassion is actually making poverty worse by creating shame, helplessness, and dependency for the recipients? And what if there really were better, more helpful ways we could teach our children how to fight poverty?

I think there are. And I’ve learned them from Haven of Peace Academy.

We’re a privileged school. We are an inexpensive school compared to other international schools in Tanzania, but we still are only accessible to the middle and upper classes. Yet on one side of our school is a hollowed-out rock quarry that is now a slum inhabited by some of the poorest people in our city. And right outside our gate sit people who are pounding rocks into gravel or selling bananas or sweeping the streets and living on a dollar a day.

For many years now, HOPAC has had the vision to teach our privileged students how to fight poverty. We know that one day, our students are going to be government officials and business owners and educational leaders in their countries, and we want them to have the tools to be world-changers.

So what I’m sharing today are the parts of our Service Learning program that can be implemented by any parent anywhere.

#1 Kids need to be educated about poverty alleviation, just like any other school subject. And they can learn it a lot younger than we might think. For example, last year in sixth grade at HOPAC, Grace learned (and even memorized!) the Sustainable Development Goals put out by the United Nations. And all ninth grade students spend a good portion of the year going through When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. (They also watch a video series based on the book.) For the past ten years, I’ve recommended When Helping Hurts over and over and over again. Every American Christian needs to read it. And HOPAC has shown me that kids as young as fourteen (with adult help) can digest it as well. Why not?

If your kids are too young to be reading books on poverty, then you read it and bring it down to their level. There’s still lots they can learn.

#2 Kids learn best from local, relationship-based service projects. HOPAC students have these kind of service projects built into their curriculum–but they could easily be built into family life as well.

Local: The occasional overseas missions trip can be great, of course. But kids need to learn that poverty is not just “out there,” across an ocean, far away. Every single community includes under-privileged people, and the best people to help them are in their own community.
Relationship-based: This is different from anonymous gift-giving or even volunteering occasionally at a homeless shelter. Kids learn best from an on-going project or activity where they are given the opportunity to build relationships with those who are under-privileged, preferably with other kids.

And if that sounds scary or impossible or too time-consuming, let me reassure you: This could be as simple as regularly visiting a park in an under-privileged neighborhood in your city. Seriously. That simple.

Let me also emphasize the importance of doing both of these things together. Simply jumping into #2 without doing #1 is not going to work. Learning how to help people in poverty requires an entire shift in worldview, and that requires education, not just a heart of service.

However, starting with #1 is an excellent place to start, even if you never get to #2. In fact, if you’re a family of readers, let me suggest you read Behind the Beautiful Forevers before getting into When Helping Hurts. I have never read a better book that presents the harsh reality and incredible complexity of poverty in an engaging (albeit disturbing) way. This is not a fun bedtime read, but most kids as young as twelve are ready to start thinking deeply about our fallen world.

I get that reading books and playing at a run-down park isn’t actually doing much to fight poverty. But that’s okay. Growing up is a season of learning, right? And I guarantee that if you work hard at exposing your kids to the reality of poverty in your community, as well educating them on how to best meet those needs, that your family will organically come up with some pretty great, tangible ideas on how to help…without hurting.

Which brings me back to my conversation in my office with Trudie. Yes, I’m not always a fan of donating stuff. But I understand the value of kids learning generosity through it. So why do I feel confident in this particular charity drive? Because in my years of learning about poverty, and Trudie’s wisdom as our Service Learning coordinator, I’ve found that there are good places and times to donate stuff.

So this Christmas, we decided that HOPAC’s elementary school kids will be asked to donate school supplies to a nearby school which is serving the poorest disabled kids in their community. This school, which is run by passionate Christians, is running on bare bones and has very few resources. I feel confident donating stuff to them because they are local, we will be buying local products, and we have a relationship with the school, so they can tell us exactly what they need. Plus, it’s only one part of the bigger picture of how we are educating our students about poverty and giving them opportunities to be involved in local, relationship-based ministries.

Thanks for caring, friends! And if you have other ideas, I would be happy to hear them.

HOPAC kids (green shirts) teaching under-privileged kids about caring for the environment.