One crisis after another

It is crisis central around here. People are living on the edge of, or in the middle of, some kind of crisis, day in and day out.

I don't mean - what am I going to wear to the party tonight, or does he like me, kind of crisis.

We're talking will she make it through the night or will it be another ambulance ride to the hospital for the 4th time this month type of crisis. Or losing your baby because of medical mis-management, or being so hungry you'll beg or eat out of a rubbish pile, or not being able to sleep because you are scared of the noises and the dark and not being able to keep a light on because electricity is so expensive, or I can't go home because mum is being beaten or killed, or someone is drunk.

I think this is what is called the Poverty Cycle. Am boy what a cycle and what a shitty shitty place to be.

And I feel so angry and so frustrated that it is all so unnecessary. All so preventable. And all so certainly, someone is getting rich off other people's pain and suffering.

And it all seems so horribly unnecessary.

If she hadn't developed an addiction to sugar and fatty foods and done some exercise and ate fruit and vege instead of chips and other packaged crap, then she probably wouldn't be so overweight. If she wasn't so overweight, she may not have developed diabetes. If she'd had access to the right medication, she probably wouldn't have become insulin dependent. If she knew about food and carbohydrates and eating for diabetes, or even had access to a glucose monitor, she probably wouldn't be stuck in her chair everyday, waiting for the next medical emergency to happen. As I sit and watch her baby grandaughter tucking into a piece of chocolate because that's all there is to eat..

At least, in some small way, with the programme I am involved with, we are starting to break some of those cycles by providing information and building confidence to make choices they want for themselves, rather than just blindly continuing.

Pick your area - teeth, nutrition, drug and alcohol, crime, unemployment, HIV and other STIs, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence. All here in one place - under the banner of poverty.

It is so so hard to watch. And the point is, you can't judge someone for not knowing something. And not knowing that they don't know.

Try living in those conditions - wooden shack (someone's burnt to shreds today probably because of the parafin lamp being on), wet and cold esp in the winter, always sick with something, hardly any money, stress, generation after generation..... and see if you could honestly say you would do any better.

And if you could, it would because you have learned about looking after yourself, and about nurition and have developed skills. That would be an interesting experiment except you would know it would end and you could leave whenever you wanted.

The world is surely an unequal place. And just for tonight, that is almost too much to bear.

Here's to ending apathy. Because we can all make a difference.