Read ^ this post first.
In one way or the other, we are all, with significantly less physical distress, victims of the media, too.
When a person is labeled as something long enough, it is easy for him/her to truly believe in the label. I am afraid we have already labeled Africans as the victim for long enough that they have accepted that as fact. Some of them believe their saviors lie somewhere out there.
“I will not work.” said Meki, a 19-year-old street kid orphaned 3 years ago, who has come to Arusha and been living on the streets since then. “I want education. Someone is going to sponsor me, I know it. Some foreigners!”
“Of the seven years that I have been on the street,” Mohammed recalled, “there was only one time that a foreigner dropped me a hundred US dollar bill.” Regretting becoming a street boy, “I am afraid the foreigners are not as generous as my friend who brought me to the streets told me.” Even though he suffers on the street, he doesn’t know any other way to make enough money to help his single mother.
Some kids make between 2 to 5 thousand shillings (roughly 2-5 dollars) a day, while a farmer on average makes about 3.
Poverty is a problem. But perhaps on our way to tackle that we have created an extra, tangible industry. An industry that does not require government intervention; in fact, it strives better as long as the government ignores the issue.
