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Poverty, not such a bad thing after all

I am sure that everyone will agree with me when I say that poverty stinks, its nothing pleasant and is on everyone’s list of top things that they fear. Poverty is the one dreadful thing that no one would want to have anything to do with. However after looking at poverty from a different perspective I discovered that there is something about poverty that can be beneficial to a community, a country or the world as a whole. I kid you not, you see there is this thing about poverty that makes the world go round, lets forget the theories on Marxism and Capitalism. Poverty is the ‘in-thing’, now you will ask why I say it is the ‘in-thing’, here is my answer:- Poverty drives slumber from the eyes of its victim, it keeps them wide awake and striving while others lay fast asleep.
Last week I got into a taxi with a middle aged man dressed in overalls, who just like me was on his way to work. He looked troubled, he had sun burnt skin and scars on his hard skinned hands which could not be unnoticed as he fidgeted at the back of the taxi to get the taxi fare from his pocket. The scars and hardness were probably due to hard labour. Where he dropped off, I saw an old lady selling home made bread on the side of the road, and imagined what it must have been like to wake up at the crack of dawn to bake bread and have it transported to be sold on that side of the road. These two incidences got me thinking of what it must be like to earn a minimum wage salary or to have no salary at all. They wake up every morning despite challenging circumstances just so they can elevate themselves. Poverty is a disease, one with a cure some find the cure instantly while others toil everyday of their lives just to get healed of the horrible disease.
Like a leech it sticks unrepentantly to its victim, with long tentacles and a domineering mouth that never gets full or closes, the only hope is that death alone would do them part.. When its jaws  take holds of an individual, its ugly influence would be seen and felt in all facets of the individual’s life, including his thinking processes. Driving one to have sleepless nights and always have an empty feeling in their hearts. As ugly and heartless poverty may be, there is something interesting about it that makes it feel like a breath of fresh air. The way it knocks on one’s door day and night making them work so hard just to have a peace of mind.
Like a leech on someone’s body, sucking with all its might trying to suck the very thing that gives you life out of you, nudging him or her to act. With hunger, want and untold reproach, poverty will send its victim to bed many a sleepless nights, nudging them to abandon sleep and act.
Many days of untold hardships and helplessness has propelled many invalids and cripples to leap over obstacles that men of stature could not bring themselves to face simply because years of study in the school poverty has strengthened their willpower and determination to pursue their dreams. There is a determination to succeed in man that is triggered by nothing but lack and hardship.
To me poverty brings on ambitions that even the rich do not have. It has been said in almost all countries in the world that when immigrants are given a job in a country, they work harder than the inhabitants of the country.
I write this not to glamorise poverty but to give encouragement to those that are not so fortunate to not having been born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It is a message to all of you in dire situations to forge ahead and strive to knock that leech off of your body and get a good night’s rest. Remember that poverty is worse than AIDS so keep working my good people, lets strive to get cured from this dreaded disease.

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