Poverty is under cultivation in The Gambia!
Anytime we
imagine the impacts of poverty, we create more mental pictures of elevating a
better status. When we see physically drain villagers on their ways to their
farms in Badari, we debate if they could really lift the locally made hoes for
an hour. If they cannot, that determines the durability of their hunger. When
women and children in the villages of Bansang rush out of to the hospital for
lack of medicines, we a forced to comprehend that their homes are hardly
habitable. If young boys in the streets of Banjul are turned to be professional
beggars, we never thought of the family he come from! When young boys and girls
choose to undertake perilous journey outside The Gambia, do they not see any
faith in their institutions? If the brain powers in the prisons are compared to
those not, are we on anyway to combat poverty? If our institution hopes for
more international aids rather than cultivate for their own prosperity we are
perplex as to whether we will ever go without international aids. If a reach
man in his comfort zone at Kololi got rubbed, is it because he has more than he
needs? When young boys and girls are beaten for following tourists in the
beautiful beaches of Senegambia, are they immoral or compelled by subconscious
social constructions? If in any way I am confused in not catching the real
courses of poverty in The Gambia, the probability is that, the problems are
cultivated and more than I can see them.
We are all subjects of poverty. Our institutions are not
only authoritarian because we have a higher percentage of ignorance but because
the majority are poor. The poor nearly have little time to talk about complex
political and economic structures that directly affects and defines them. They
rather will prefer to hustle on mechanisms of making food available on the
table. When a poor husband of three or four wives send his daughters to bear
the burdens of early marriage, it is not enough to say he is religious or
ignorant of the consequences thereof but rather, his conditions are largely
dictated by poverty -he had to meet the basic needs of an extended family. This
is not to claim that nuclear families are not facing the brunt poverty. They just
do it in their own ways.
Poor institutions are the root cause of what we will define
in a word as poverty. Poverty as a condition of not meeting ones basic needs is
largely overwhelming and undefeatable if we are to continue with the
institutions we have today. Majority of The Gambians are born death in poverty
and do largely nothing significant to change them. This is embedded in our
house of ignorance which is the root cause of individual and collective poverty
almost every Gambian is engulfed in today. When a father is face with the
striking decision in which of his child to send to school or to seek medical
care, is because he failed to calculate his own poor status. If the daily
chores are considered to be feminine rather than shared, this state condemned
women to the ultimatum of poverty. When I rush to the hospitals in any part of
The Gambia, women and children dominate the queues for seemingly unavailable
medicines while men endure with their poor health status at work.
Bad polices are largely political and secondarily religious.
When a poor school graduate cannot find anything to do, our political
institutions are to blame but when the same individual goes on marrying four
wives, his poor decision is largely influenced by his religious background. In
a society where manhood is typically measured by how many wives or children one
brings up, not only political institutions are decaying but also moral ones. If
we are so dull to understand our own “bad” cultures and traditions but instead
centralise our failures on the government alone, we will hardly triumph over
poverty.
When white colour jobs are seen as the ultimatum of success,
that shows how less innovative a population we are. The Gambian culture faces
more loopholes than it presents for progress against poverty. We are friends
with aids and enemies with our own makings. Rwanda and Ethiopia are doing
handsomely well because they do keep themselves well and others only
secondarily.
Cultures and traditions are lenses of perception. They are
spectrums of the reality. When they drive us apart, they should be abandoned
and so as when they condemned us to poverty. Most of what I analysed from the
poverty in The Gambia is culturally and traditionally link. When children are
raised for the mere sake of carrying out matrimonial duties I cry in my mind as
to whether we are not completely lost.
Leadership from the informal to the formal sectors are
mostly unfair. Merit is not given to whom it belongs to, rather it follows the
background of who belongs to which group, party or which faith or idea you share.
Favouritism and nepotism are corner stones that shamefully define The Gambian
community. In fact, it is “institutionalised”. This is what one will broadly
define as corruption. To me, Gambian corruption is inbuilt. We are born in it, brought up in it and it unfortunately
continue to accompany many to their untimely graves. The way a society
normalise evil tells how poverty is deepen. When the poor only concentrate on
having food on the table regardless to how it is gain, not only is morality
lost, but there you can see the frustration imposed by poverty. When a person’s
live is put on stake because of food, one might underestimate the scars of
poverty. When poor voters sold their voices for a plate of rice, and laugh to
satisfy the leaders one might understand that the pit of poverty is not as
shallow as the corrupt statisticians will necessary show.
Leaders are not necessarily incapable to lead better, they
are also capacitated by the poor majority to lead badly. Poverty is not actually
the root cause of all evils happening in The Gambia but it is necessarily link
to it. When the few powerful or rich class dictates a society because of the
need to have food on the table, and the poor majority accepts that, that food
itself becomes illegal.
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