Do we have to live in poverty to understand it?

Do we have to live in poverty to understand it?

Sondang Grace Sirait, Contributor, Jakarta

The other week I was out with my boyfriend, circling the Pondok
Indah area to find a decent dinner. Or supper, rather, since it
was past 10 at night. Half an hour later, after a round of
spaghetti bolognaise and fish-and-chips at a cafe, we started
making our way home. I was about to hop on the car when something
caught my eye.

A man in his 40s was sitting near the street corner just
across from the restaurant. His eyes looked helpless, with hands
holding his young daughter who had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
Her schoolbag lay next to them.

I know this may seem as a typical sight in this urban jungle
called Jakarta, where the poor makes up more than half the
population, where the streets are home to more people than we
could imagine. But there's something about his eyes that spoke of
restlessness, more than anything.

Well, one thing for sure, I could not sleep that night. A lot
of questions popped in my mind, with all of its naoveti. Could
they have just been evicted from their home? Where's the mother?
Why that look on the man's face, as if there's no tomorrow? How
desperate can a man get?

For a minute I felt ashamed, having taken all things for
granted, while others do not even have the luxury to have a
decent night's sleep. While I had been fretting about my weight,
that young girl couldn't even feel the warmth of a blanket.

However, as the wise would say, each life has its own course,
and none the same. What we need now is more empathy, to make it a
better life to live for all of us.

When a student in the United States, then as a journalist, at
times I found myself amazed about how monotonous some newspapers'
top stories can be, anything from the issue of street parking to
whatever the town council meeting ended up with that week.

There was even a story on how a Dunkin Donuts' manager got so
mad that the parking spot in front of his store was always used
by the patrons of the next-door Starbucks that he had to take it
to the town council, hence a whole new debate on street parking.
We're talking Evanston, Illinois, here!

I always thought life in developing countries was much more
interesting, offering dynamics that are sometimes unthinkable,
but never unfathomable.

Poverty, for one, comes across as a never-ending issue. In his
book Development as Freedom, Indian economist Amartya Sen wrote
on the importance to distinguish poverty as capability inadequacy
from that of poverty of lowness of income. Like other good-
governance believers, he calls on governments to provide better
basic education and health care as a means to creating a better
chance for the poor to improve their condition.

Ideally speaking, that's what our government should be
thinking about. Some political parties have actually taken on
this issue and approach in their planned campaigns, bringing up
the notion of civil empowerment and self-capability. But just how
far are they willing to go the extra mile? That is left to be
answered.

After all, we've got a president who's only visited dengue-
stricken kids three months after the deadly outbreak started - -a
few days after the VP made his round of visit to hospitals. And
rumor has it that she is scheduled to visit Nabire, Papua in the
near future to check on the victims of an earlier earthquake.

What's wrong here? Lack of PR skills? Or just too much on the
agenda, especially with the elections at our front door?

You tell me. If it's not too much to ask for, right now all I
want is a good night's sleep.

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