It seems pretty tactless to speak about “poverty in Malta” with the images of the devastated Haiti earthquake victims flooding the news every night. That, of course, is real poverty.
From the comfort of our homes we catch a glimpse of what is happening and feel a twinge of sympathy: “poor things” we mutter under our breath and then quickly switch the channel.
Let’s face it: the Eurostat report which revealed this week that 65 per cent cannot afford a one-week holiday, and describing this as “at risk of poverty” sounds facetious by comparison.
According to the report, “material deprivation is defined as the inability to afford at least three of nine particular items, which include the ability to keep a home adequately warm, a meal including chicken, meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent, the ability to pay for a one-week annual holiday away from home, keeping up with the bills (mortgage, utility bills, loan payments) and the possession of a washing machine, colour television, telephone and a private car.”
In a world in which the ability to afford “things” has become our mantra, real deprivation is often hard to fathom.
The above list to a Haitian (even before the earthquake) probably sounds like the ultimate in luxury. To most of us, however, a telephone (to name just one item) is standard fare, and we would consider it unthinkable to live without one. We are even at a point when being without a mobile is unheard of. As for living without Cable TV, Internet, laptop, Notebook, iPhone and Blackberry ...you’ve got to be kidding me!
If you had to tell a teenager that you won’t be paying his/her mobile bills any more because times are hard and you have to budget, they will probably sulk and feel deprived compared to their friends. Perhaps they need to be forced to sit in front of the TV and watch as people fight each other over the food packages being distributed by international relief agencies.
It’s all relative
Still, this does not mean that relative poverty in Malta does not exist and here is where the Eurostat scale becomes relevant.
We know that there are slum areas because the occasional TV programme or newspaper article brings us interviews and shows us the footage and photos. We know that there are elderly people who are poor by our standards because sometimes we come across a little old lady shuffling along, wrapped in a threadbare shawl and counting out her change very carefully when making a purchase.
I’ve seen the occasional woman with several children straggling behind her, whose clothes are obviously hand-me-downs and who clearly need a good meal. And the unshaven, unemployed men who lounge about in village squares, either through choice or hard luck, who are caught in a vicious circle of state dependency and an inability to get on their feet.
We often hear that the poverty in Malta is hidden because there are no homeless people sleeping on cardboard and begging at City Gate. Our network of extended families means that there is always someone willing to take in a relative who is down and out, so the real, true picture of people barely scraping by and living on benefits is not as apparent as it would be in a big city.
And, ironically enough, this being the West, it is not always starving people who are the real indicators of what it means to be poor. On the contrary, those who are less well off tend to be obese – many families who cannot afford healthy (but more expensive) options like fruit, vegetables, brown bread and lean cuts of meat resort to buying cheap, processed junk food which not only has no nutritional value, but is highly fattening. As they clog their arteries with saturated fats, this strata of society also falls victim to the related illnesses which come with a poor diet – diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol – leading to more patients relying on an already unsustainable free healthcare system.
So yes, the poor do exist here; it just takes some adjustment in our perception to actually see them.
Poor me
The meaning of poverty also has to be taken within the context of what it means to be poor in relation to other lifestyles.
Because of our mild winters, adequate heating is not really an issue, and yet, our damp, cold homes would not be acceptable to anyone coming from a more affluent country. The sight of us huddling around a dismal gas or electric heater which only warms one room at a time would be looked at with raised eyebrows and shock horror by someone used to central heating.
It hasn’t helped matters that our astronomical electricity bills have led to more and more cutbacks in what I consider to be the “comfort factor”.
Having said that, I have to add that, sometimes, the choice of priorities puzzles me.
People will often begrudge themselves the comfort of a well-heated home (or an air-conditioned home in summer), but think nothing of spending e43,000 on a car which depreciates in value the moment you drive out of the showroom. This, in a country where a new car is quickly mangled by potholes, atrocious roads and inconsiderate drivers who carelessly dent your bumper or break off your side mirror as they try to park.
In Malta, however, the car is king. Owning a car is also more important than travel to the average person, according to the above-mentioned report (only two per cent say they don’t own a car). Which means that most people would rather spend five years paying off a new car which guzzles up petrol as they go round and round in circles on this tiny island, rather than discovering the big old world out there. That says a lot about our mentality.
Even if we do blame the inadequate public transport system for why a car is such a necessity, it doesn’t explain why people opt for such expensive vehicles when a more modest car will still take you from Point A to Point B, with perhaps some cash left over for travelling. The obvious answer is that the car is a status symbol.
I often wonder the same thing about houses; I have never been able to understand why people pour so much money into them. Unless you are extremely rich (in which case none of this applies to you), what is the point of spending your whole working life paying off a crippling mortgage plus assorted debts for extravagant home décor which you clearly cannot afford and which is preventing you from doing anything else? Then when you cannot keep up with all the bills, it all goes haywire and you feel unjustly betrayed because somehow you were led to believe that yes, you could have it all.
I know I am the odd one out on this because most Maltese worship their homes, but I still have to ask: wouldn’t they rather spend their money on enjoying themselves and living well? After all, once you have all the creature comforts in your home, everything else is pretty much a case of constant upgrading.
Funny, it sounds just like a car huh?
What you want, what you need
In Manslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, he speaks of the basics like shelter and food before going on to the more abstract notions of love and achievements. So perhaps instead of complaining about the material things which we so desperately “need” and moaning about the things we don’t “have”, we need to get back to basics ourselves, creating our own individual pyramid.
If you are having problems getting started, switch on the news about Haiti – that will get your priorities straight.
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