On ceilings and opportunities.

We talk about the importance of education. In the US, education is the ticket out of poverty. I picked up a book once about three men living in the ghetto of some US city, and in high school they made a pact that they would be doctors one day. And they stuck to it. Boom – from the ghetto to a doctor’s salary. They were able to leave danger and frustration, and now have the spiritual wealth caring for people offers and the stability, enjoyment, and ease financial wealth offers.

Tho it must be noted that despite the hope this arouses, these gentlemen are exceptions. We talk often in the States of the “cycle of poverty” – you’re trapped, you can’t get out.

Here in Cote d’Ivoire, the “cycle of poverty” seems alive and well. People with university degrees are on the side of the road selling phone calls from their personal cell phones (which are actually commonly used here). They sit there in their little “cabine appel” (“appel” means “call” in French), and if you run out of credit on your cell phone, you pay 100 CFA (about 25 US cents, though that 25 cents goes a lot farther here), you approach one of these guys and make a call. So they went to university to do that? There aren’t jobs here. There aren’t possibilities, there aren’t opportunities.

In Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, the author talks about four “poverty traps” that keep the poorest countries (most of which are in Africa) so very poor. Their economic growth is so minimal, you have to ask what difference it’s really making. In the book, he talks about chutes and ladders. Chutes make it impossible to move up; ladders obviously provide the scaffolding one needs to make progress.

The chutes make ceilings – you are limited, you can only get so far. No matter how much you work, how much you try, you just can’t move up. Obviously slavery, Jim Crow, the menacing of the KKK, segregation, denial of the right to vote, denial of the right to own land, etc were chutes for the black community in the US.

Often, living with ceilings for so long causes what I have heard called a “mentality of oppression.” There is a point when folks are so broken down and used to a lack of progress, that it becomes internalized. My colleague in the Teacher Training College is one of the most hard working people here and certainly a good friend. Yet, I become frustrated with him. He says, “Ideally we’d like 3 or 4 computers here, and we can run a cyber café.” So I run around and find a way to purchase second hand computers, and he says immediately, “Yeah but they’re crappy ones.” I thought, “Can’t we at least give this a try?? Or maybe if we talk to the second hand computer folks, they can refer us to someone else who could give us what we want. Why are you so negative about this?? You’re killing it before it started!”

I also want to highlight that these chutes still exist for the black community in the States. An Ethiopian friend grew up in the States and was advised by her teacher not to take AP classes during high school, because they’d be “too much.” Her dad, who thank God had not internalized that her potential was limited, pushed for his daughter to take them. She did. And she did well. This begs the question, how many teachers, who do have good intentions and don’t even realize it, counsel black students to take the less challenging classes? And how many black folks, because of this internalized idea of “I can only achieve so much,” don’t push to go further?

The “chutes” are physical and psychological. How many times do we doubt ourselves so much that we kill our objective before even trying? I have 4 months left to make an impact here – I dream up starting a women’s group, working with a group of high school students to mobilize them so they can fight positively for what they want, and even working with the director here to develop a strategic plan. But I’m obsessed with how ineffective I’ll be, how I’ll fail, so I keep pushing them off. Like my colleague, I’m killing it before I even started.

Back to the physical chutes, this is a huge problem in Cote d’Ivoire. Why work hard for an education when there’s no gain from your effort? No, not everyone with a degree is selling phone calls on the side of the street. But it seems like the only opportunity here to gain some kind of comfortable living is to have a state-funded job – a government official, a policeman or policewoman, a teacher, etc or to work for a Lebanese-owned or French-owned company. I don’t know if an increase in individual entrepreneurship here could give Ivoirians more opportunities – perhaps it could. But folks don’t have the capital to start the businesses. And furthermore, culturally, I don’t see Ivoirians as entrepreneurs. They have the French socialist mentality, “The state takes care of everything,” which thwarts motivation to take initiative and be innovative and creative. It seems the tribes functioned in a very communal manner (again, a socialist state), and starting a business is a very individual initiative.

Though it must be noted that wealth is not the answer. Wealth is important to be able to live comfortable. Here, I see wealthier families who live in strife, while less wealthy families live with care, respect, and support for each other – and thus in peace. In the States, the very wealthy who wanted more have caused much destruction to many people. It’s just that Ivoirians need to have enough opportunities to not be forced to sit by the side of the street and sell phone calls for 25 cents a pop.