The first in a series of Think3 posts looking into poverty in Malta.
In its editorial on 30th March 2010, the Times of Malta – Malta’s main English language daily newspaper – chose to make an appeal for a community effort to fight poverty. I had decided to use my Easter week visit to Malta for an introductory foray in my quest to discover how the UN Millennium Goals are perceived on the island. I tried to shed all prejudiced conceptions that I had of an affluent society well into its EU membership. My first task was in fact to discover what poverty really is in a Maltese context. What could poverty mean in a close-knit 21st century nation of 400,000 people where it is virtually impossible to get lost and live the life of a loner. Surely the Maltese equivalent of the world famous eighties snapshot of an african child with bloated stomach surrounded by flies in a drought ridden community did not exist? Or was I looking in the wrong places?
As it turned out, the traditional media was abuzz with reports of conferences and events organised by various NGOs in order to step up awareness. Caritas Malta, for example, was promoting its campaign called “Zero Poverty – Act Now”. Bingo. The message of the Zero Poverty campaign was simple: poverty is not inevitable and everyone, from decision-makers to the man in the street, can help make a vision of zero poverty a reality.
Earlier in the week I had met Anthea Agius who is currently the Chairperson of the Malta Association of Social Workers. Anthea would be my introduction to the field – a person with hands on experience of poverty in Malta. Anthea’s first attempt at defining poverty in a Maltese context has me baffled. “Poverty is poor people”. What looks like a confusing tautology is really an effort at emphasising the personal and contextual approach one needs when tackling poverty. Poverty is about people and the way they live – unlike a disease or a virus it does not exist on its own and independently. You cannot inoculate people from getting poor. It happens to people because of circumstance.
Now that is interesting. Anthea stresses the importance of understanding the circumstances that lead to poverty. She speaks with passion, almost a controlled anger – probably the result of having come up against many a dead end and obstacle. She is determined to get the message through – that poverty is not always how we imagine it and that probably we often define it wrongly because we’d be uncomfortable with the reality when it hits home. In Anthea’s words “there is a discrepancy between the actual definition of poverty and the way people define poverty”.
The only evidence of beggars and “bums” in Malta are the “Nix Mangiari” steps in Valletta. They are a relic of old times past when beggars would line the steps leading from the busy port yelling “nix mangiaris” – corrupt latin for “nothing to eat”. The steps are rarely used now although the port is picking up with the arrival of cruise liners and their spend-a-day tourists. The way I understand Anthea’s explanation, there is no place for the classical, dickensian poverty in 21st century Malta. Instead poverty is the result of unfortunate and unhappy circumstance.
Mgr Grech of Caritas Malta spoke of “poverty as a multidimensional reality with a multitude of causes”. Anthea’s definition tallies with this view. The “complex” poverty she speaks of defies simple definition. More than that, the fairy tale Cinderella solution that can wave away the troubles with a euro a day is not what the poverty fighters are looking for. The multidimensional reality of poverty requires multidimensional solutions. Anthea describes three weapons in the war on poverty – Resources, Research and Legal Instruments.
Understanding the causes of poverty is a first step to tackling it. Poverty can be anything from an abused child to a high-school dropout. What could be a normal life one minute could be a one-way ticket to a substandard life the next – and the stressor is to be found in the circumstances that lead to poverty itself. Eventually you begin to understand that the biggest obstacle to addressing poverty is our reluctance to look at the ugly circumstances that lead to poverty.
The biggest obstacle is in fact the fear of looking in the mirror and noticing that we ain’t that beautiful.
Image of Nix Mangiari steps from Panoramio collection by dmgerrard
One reply on “Nix Mangiari?”
Many valid points in your observations & compiling of opinions. Thinking aloud I would add education and the importance of teaching in a non-patronizing manner what has always been termed as the ‘injorant’. This is another type of poverty and is very evident in certain localities of the Maltese islands. Yes I strongly believe that there are cases of a poor standard of living that arise from the fact that the said person is unable to make ends meet due to the fact that he or she cannot get priorities right. It may not be the said person’s fault per se (or not the person’s fault alone) as if you are brought up in a certain environment some characteristic of your upbringing will be reflected in you way of life too.
We recently heard of a case of mother and children living in a garage. Without going into further detail…what are the chances that her kids will lead the same lifestyle?