Where are the poor?

"Poor: needy, lacking the necessities of life". So says the Rae in its first meaning of this reviled adjective that we were all once. Some are, others will be forever.

That the exhibition of one's need is inhuman and very often plunges the rapier into the deepest wound of human pride, is something natural. So natural that a needy person will never say he is needy. Euphemisms are a very effective psychosocial resource to give peace of mind to souls and wills that, due to the misfortunes of life, do not have what they need to live, as the RAE says. I would add, I would add, with dignity. Because what we are talking about here is human dignity despite poverty and need. Extremes not so alien to the society in which we live and we all, I mean all of us, have some examples in our own families. However, displaying need is one thing and making it visible is quite another. This must be present in our minds and in our essence, not so much in the media stigmatising part of the people as "hunger queues" or in the mouths of some insensitive politician, asking where are those poor people? who, through the tinted windows of his official car, prevents him from perceiving the crude reality that nobody wants to see, let alone accept. I am imagining the voices of those poor people in their deafening silence asking the same question: Where are those politicians? Politicians who really look after the interests of the citizens beyond swelling their pay slips and possessing the various privileges that they themselves, in the name of the people, give themselves. Politicians serving the people and not serving the people.

I have been living in Namibia for a long enough time to permeate Namibian society, to integrate into it and to know first hand what the tribal election system of Damaras, Owambos, Himbas, Namas of their Tribal Council is like. It would surprise you if I told you that becoming a councillor, equivalent here to a regional deputy, is not the beginning of serving the community but the result of having served it at least, as their statutes stipulate, for more than 15 years in an unblemished manner. The election is face-to-face by wards and constituency lands by population density and the Councillor must have the unanimity of the votes, otherwise he/she is not elected. This is an extreme that obliges everyone to work together for the benefit of all. Come on, just like here!

I would like to make a simple map for our politician if he honestly wants to know "where those poor people are". What's more, I promise to do it without him having to move from his air-conditioned car seat or leave his solemn office adorned with decorations in the service of the community, lest those poor people infect him with their misery, or he infect them with his wealth. The needy are, my dear sir, on the lists of long-term job seekers, on the lists of the electricity and oil companies' social vouchers, on the rental aid lists, on the Caritas and Red Cross lists and there is a long list, which I will not mention here for the sake of preserving the human dignity of these poor people, compiled by the various associations and social dynamics scattered throughout the neighbourhoods of the four corners of this country, which benevolently help them without expecting anything from anyone. True poverty is, in essence, poverty of spirit, of humanism and of humanity.

Allow me to quote from the history of Europe when the "great princess", after learning that the peasants had no bread during one of the periods of famine that devastated France during the reign of her husband, King Louis XVI, said: "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" That's right, let them eat Brioche! those poor people our politician is looking for. We poor people don't even fall for that.