Extreme poverty hurts

Imagine the worst flu you’ve ever had. Your head’s pounding like a drum. The pain slices into your limbs so deeply that your bones seem to be shattered. Even if you were well you’d be withering in this heat. You can barely get up. Then add nausea and stomach cramps. It’s not just the flu. It’s an epidemic, and it’s sweeping across the continent like a tsunami, killing your neighbours and family members. It’s malaria.

There’s no pharmacy to get medication, no relief in sight. And now you have to walk forty minutes to collect water.

Every step ricochets painfully in your head. Every! Time! Your! Foot! Touches! The! Ground!

It would be so easy to give in to hopelessness, but you don’t. You just get on with it. You know in your heart that if you persist you’ll get back home with water to drink. You will get through the day.

That story may sound extreme. It is extreme, but unfortunately it’s not an exaggeration. Malaria is a daily fact of life for far too many people in Africa right now, and it is only one aspect of their suffering. Here is the true story of extreme poverty in Kenya (United Nations Statistics Division):
- Over 8.6 million people (23% of the population) struggle to get by on less than $1 per day;
- 24% of primary school aged children are not enrolled in school;
- A baby born today is likely to live just 51 years;
- Of every 100 children born, 12 die before their fifth birthday;
- 43% of people (about 16.1 million) do not have access to improved drinking water.

We created Happy Villages to assist people out of this misery, out of extreme poverty. The scale and complexity of the problems makes them seem insurmountable at first glance, but they’re not. Jeffrey Sachs, International Development Expert, argues,

“The basic truth is that for less than a percent of the income of the rich world nobody has to die of poverty on the planet. That's really a powerful truth.”

In one way it’s very simple. On the other hand though, the causes of poverty are extremely complex. Community development projects frequently fail. Natural, political and social processes are inextricably linked everywhere in the world, and nowhere more so than in Africa. We have designed our way of working with that knowledge in mind.