poverty and ignorance go hand in hand?
By Ainhoa
Poverty goes beyond lack of income and resources to guarantee sustainable livelihoods. Poverty is a human rights problem. Different manifestations of poverty include hunger, malnutrition, lack of decent housing and limited access to other basic services such as education or health. There are also discrimination and social exclusion which includes the absence of participation by the poor in decision-making, especially those that affect them. The question in, what are we complaining about? Many of us are always asking for thing and complaining about everything when we really have everything just and necessary to be happy. These people who do not have access to many of these things are the ones who should complain and the truth is that with the minimum they are already satisfied. In many cities, whole families are seen who have had to choose to go outside to trade different products that allow them to survive. In the streets they are forced to find a space, entering informality and illegality, and facing new policies for the recovery of public space.
This picture is photographed on a city street. It reflects the pure reality of nowadays, the daily life of poor people and who have almost no rights, those people who earn their living doing hard work, most of them on the street, to have a minimum salary to be able to pay the necessary factors of today to have a ‘’good’’ life. On the background we can see people walking calmily through the streets of the city. It could be people who are going to run errands, people taking a walk, people who are going to work…
We also see a man sitting on a kind of low stool with his legs stretched out on the floor. He is doing his job which is to clean people’s shoes. It is quite a hard job and it is done on the street, instead of being indoors with the necessary accessories and objects to be able to do it in a more correct way. This man is wearing a nice, long, blue, plain, denim and worn jeans- a gorgeous, quite loose, beige, plain, corduroy and long-sleeved jacket with a few buttons on the side of each sleeve and a pair of nice, black, plain, leather, flat shoes. To complement the outfit he wears a beautiful, blue, white and yellow and cotton cap with white letters on the visor. On the foreground on the right, we can see a man sitting in a red wooden chair with the feet propped up like some kind of piece of wood reading the newspaper and who seems to have no worries and a lot of free time. He also seems to be a man with an economically good situation since he goes to a place to have his shoes cleaned instead of cleaning them by himself. He is wearing a nice, long, dark blue, plain, denim jeans - a gorgeous, baggy, dark blue, red, plain, polyester, long-sleeved jacket done at the front with a zip – a pair of beautiful, black, plain, leather, flat shoes with shine as if he had bought them right then and there. We can see that on his leg he has a kind of brown briefcase with papers inside, that indicates that it may be that after they finish cleaning his shoes he goes to work or vice versa. On the left we see a man smiling at the camera. He is seem as a positive man who tries to make the best of himself at all times, he prefers to put aside the bad that his work has and think about some of the positive aspects of that work: meeting people and establishing a cordial connection with them, beige able to reach to have a deeper relationship with ones of his clients. This man is also sitting on a kind of low stool just like his partner, doing his job. It seems that h has just cleaned the shoes of one of clients with a kind of sponge that he is keeping in a metal box and which polishes them, that is way the client’s shoes are shiny. He is wearing a nice, long, black, plain, denim jeans – a beautiful, quite loose, blue, cotton, round-necked and long-sleeved sweatshirt.
As far as I’m concerned, I do feel that the work being done by the people in the picture is not suitable for carrying it out on the street. In summer, it depends on the city, it is very hot and in this work many hours pass, therefore it would be very hot and on the other hand, in winter it would be very cold and they would not be in the conditions to do it in the street. That is why I think it should be done in a place that has these conditions depending on the time of year they are. Another aspect that we can see in the photo is that the worker is almost lying on the floor at the disposal of the client, who is in a chair a little more comfortable, that is, there is a clear inequality between the two, the worker is in worse conditions compared to the client and they should both be on equal terms.