Breaking the Circle of Poverty It is most likely that only a few of us are aware of it. That is why somebody has called it the �hidden poverty�. It is not near the places where we walk by daily. Or, when it is, we don�t take notice of it, probably because it may not be the outside as much as the inside the houses. That is the world of poverty housing in Braga. Mr. D lives behind a quite beautiful two-story house. When you walk down a side street, away from the main road in Palmeira, you can see this house. If you look really closely, behind it, partially hidden by the wall that borders the house, you can see a small shed. At first sight, it looks like an extension of the house. You would think of it as an unfinished construction, roughly made, probably for storage. This is probably what I would think, if I did not know that a �Habitat family� lives there. The house is the size of my kitchen, although it lodges a couple and two children (that are not so young anymore, one is 16, the other almost 18). The divisions of the house are unfinished cement walls. Three �bedrooms� and a kitchen. There is no electricity or running water. Nineteen years ago, more or less at the time that the couple has been living there, Mr. and Mrs. D built a well, some 50 meters away. Summer or winter, that is where they go to get their water, for food as well as for cleaning: baths are taken standing up in a plastic vessel. Taking into consideration these conditions, it is impressive to see Mrs. D�s joy, something that not even such a dark and poor place could wash away. Not all families that the Associa��o Humanit�ria Habitat is helping in Palmeira live in such appalling conditions. There are houses where, more than the conditions themselves, it is the small or inadequate space that denounces the poverty. Be there as it may, those families� histories are not less sad. J. and R.�s house, for instance, has electricity and water, and looks like a decent house from the outside. However, there are only three bedrooms, to be divided in between S�s parents, their three sons, S. and her husband and their two kids. The couple sleeps with the youngest child, while the other child, a boy, shares the same bed with the two brothers of S. One of them, a mentally retarded child, wets the bed frequently. Sometimes, there are situations where lack of space and poor housing conditions come together, or situations where health problems are directly connected with these conditions. There is, for instance, the case of a child with serious breathing problems in a damp house where the ceiling is constantly leaking. There is also MJ, a lady who in her early twenties was unable to pay for a decent analysis and a proper cure for a troubled knee. She has seen the problem in her knee develop to the point of not allowing her to take a step without pain. The day we went to meet her, we waited for ten minutes while she walked down the stairs from the first floor where she lives. Silence took hold of us as, uncomfortably, and even somewhat ashamed, as we realized that that is where the bathroom is placed. The painful ten minutes that we were watching repeated themselves time and time again over the length of a day. It is not always easy to keep the smiles and not all have the strength of will of Sr. D... Poverty seems to be a closed circle that feeds and swells with the passing of time, like an unstoppable snowball. We have a saying in Portugal that claims that no disaster comes alone. Poverty condemns people to live in inadequate housing where diseases spread and hope fades. If education is normally pointed out as one way out of this circle, I wonder, however, how is it possible to study in a house without electricity, or in a house where electricity, although existent, does not allow for a heater in the winter, or in a house where there is no living-room and tiny bedrooms are crowded with people? Decent housing is far from being the answer to all problems in the world, and surely it will not resolve all problems of the twelve families in Palmeira. But it will help. It certainly will start to break the circle of poverty and allow hope to rise. Jane, who has been working with Associa�ao Humait�ria Habitat for longer than I have, tells me that one of the most gratifying experiences she can remember is the change that she saw operated in Sr. Br�s, the first Habitat homeowner in Portugal. With sparkling eyes, she tells me that when she met him, he would not talk a lot and that, when he would, he didn�t look you in the eye. He had that ashamed shyness that poor people often have. Now that he lives in his new home, he is different in a way that maybe not even he realizes. Among so many changes, he has himself decided to return to school and finish, at least, primary school, to learn how to read and write.
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