Overview...

What started as an awareness raising and ethnographic styled walk through Sierra Leone, this site now details the encounters of a not so academic academic who spends more time occupying Wall Street and squats than a university...

Monday, August 9, 2010

Struggles?

I just came across a new study that shows Sierra Leone as about the ninth worst national in the world in terms of poverty.  The Multidimensional Poverty Index is a very interesting study that gets beyond dollars and cents, and into what people actually have and how they live.  There is a brief country report on Sierra Leone right here.

If I am reading it correctly in skimming through it, the main areas effecting poverty the most in Sierra Leone come in the living standard part - electricity, sanitation, water, cooking fuel, floors, personal assets - but also in deficient schooling and child mortality.  According to this study 81% of Sierra Leoneans are in poverty - 4.4 million people.  That is the population of the Greater Boston area.  Imagine if the entire Boston metropolitan area was in the deepest depths of poverty.

Boylston Street?
Boston Harbor...  tea anyone?

A villa in Lexington or Concord?
The view from Plymouth Rock?
Paul Revere getting ready for a midnight ride?

This would never be stood for in the United States, yet across the ocean, we let it slide...

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