Survivor Poverty

An article by Frank    No Comments

In February a group in the Waikato took part in an experience called Survivor Poverty. The aim was to gain some empathy for those TEAR Fund works alongside. They raised over $1100 for TEAR Fund to use to assist those who need it most. The following was written by Nikki ten Hove, one of the Survivors. Nikki offers her reflections on the experience.

Survivor poverty is like a slap in the face. Do it. It will change your life.

Instead of spending our long weekend doing as most and going away to indulge ourselves, we chose instead to go without. We slept in rudimentary shelters we made from cardboard boxes, tarpaulin, twine and a few wooden crates. We were permitted only a single, itchy blanket for warmth. No pillows. Only one set of clothes. No showers. A long-drop for a toilet. We had a 400m walk for clean water. To earn our food we had to make a ridiculous amount of paper boxes from which we ate a very non-appeal goop they sold to us as ‘rice and dahl’. Despite the heat and lack of energy due to not being able to sleep and limited food we were made to work during the day both to earn money and as part of the Survivor challenges. I stood for 4hours on a stump with the promised reward of a roast chicken dinner for my group were I to outlast the other representatives.. who turned out to be quite the determined ones.

We’ve all seen the poor people on the television, the ones with flies on their faces- and I feel that only through something like survivor poverty can you actually come to understand why they don’t have the energy to shoo the flies away.

You may see how hungry they are, but have you felt anything close to how hungry they are?
You may see how exhausted they are, but have you ever seen the morning come after a restless night and realise you need to make 50 more paper boxes before you can afford breakfast?
You may see the loss of hope in their faces, but have you worked to offer them hope?

Poverty is outside your comfort zone. Literally. Experiencing what I did has hard and all I wanted was for it to be over- then I realised- for over 3 million people, it won’t be over.

Psalms like Psalm 23 take a whole new meaning
“He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.” (Psalm 23: 2-3)

I enrolled for survivor poverty mostly because it sounded like fun, what I got was an experience that I would most definitely recommend. Sympathy comes easy enough when it comes to the poor, but it’s empathy we need. And that makes the difference.

And now something from me about why Survivor Poverty was done and what was achieved.

Almost a year ago I saw some information about Slum Survivor, an event run by TEAR Australia. When I saw it I thought, “Sweet, I’ve always wanted to do something like one of those Survivor shows on TV.” I looked through the info and like some bits and not other bits. This could be made harder. How real is poverty when you are just in a small shelter in your church carpark right next to technology and luxury? I wanted to do something more, and thus began the planning of Survivor Poverty.

Survivor Poverty involved living in small shelters made of rubbish and branches and whatever we could find. It involved eating only two meals a day of just rice and dhal, and drinking only water, gathered from one tap about 400m walk from the slum site in an old shed. To eat, people had to work to earn Rupees. This work generally involved the boring task of making hundreds of paper boxes. There were challenges including gathering water for over an hour, endurance, literacy and treasure hunting. It was as close to poverty as any of these survivors had ever been.

People were tired, hungry, sick and at times wondering why they had paid to come to this thing. What these 25 people had only seen on tv or movies they now had a real taste of. I think it was really beneficial to everyone who went and the fact that we were able to raise over $1100 for TEAR fund to distribute to those who need it most was great.

This was the first Survivor Poverty and we weren’t really too sure how it would go.

I’m already thinking about what we’ll be doing for the next one.