Poverty in the midst of plenty

On the morning of 24th December, 2012, i had no reason to step out of my house in my local community but did and i overheard a group of women discussing. They were happy at the beginning of the discussion, then suddenly they all turned cold and the tone of the discussion changed to that of pity and sympathy that forced me to approach them and find out the sudden change of mood.

One of the women pointed to a house nearby and told me that one woman just gave birth to a baby boy and they were coming from there to see her. Given birth to a new life is good news and i was happy for the woman because she delivered safely and this was her third child. I went ahead to ask why the change in mood and i was informed that she has no food to eat. She was not working or trading and her husband out of the meager earning has paid her hospital bills and there was nothing left to feed the woman and her children.

I was moved, so i went to visit mother and child. lo and behold, the husband just came back from fetching water and they were talking about food when i knocked. After the brief visit, i went home and told my elder mate the story, we quickly rallied round and put together some food items which we sent to her and her family. i know that she has told me her story sometime ago before given birth to this third child but one has to be careful in taken up another persons family because a lot of things are ascribed to spiritism even when you had best of intentions.

You can imagine what it is like for a woman that just gave birth to be hungry and do not see any hope in the nearest future. Hunger is a deadly disease that can kill and two major lives are involved here - mother & her new born child.

This is one story out of so many. Women are suffering enduring hardship to bring up their children and so many are also having so many children even when it is glaringly obvious to them that they cannot feed them well and give them the best of education, they will go ahead to breed them.

I will want to get to educate women on given birth to only the number of children they know they can cater for without being misconstrued. there is so much poverty while our politicians and people at the top are stealing us dry instead of making available to the common man our quota of the largesse.