My first thoughts on poverty

Port Harcourt, 22/2/2006

Yes, this is a developing country and you have to expect poverty when you plan your travel. It is another thing to see it and in such degree and volume.

Driving through the villages on the way to and from campus is amazing and depressing. It is amazing to see how people live with so little. There are small market stalls and people selling things in front of their houses. Sometimes it is just a few things – sometimes it is a stall which is full of books or motorbike tires, or square loaves of bread hanging in bags. It seems like everyone is selling something.

The poverty that we saw is incredible. There is little sanitation; garbage is placed in ditches by the side of the road or just beside the houses. Susan says that you can measure the economic health of a country by the way it deals with its garbage.

It is sometimes difficult to determine if a building is occupied or not as deterioration or a state of half completed construction does not affect inhabitation.

The area that we saw aorund Port Harcourt was the most impoverished that we saw in Nigeria.