That IS the question. Am I poor or not?

Well, I have just got a credit card and I had to pay quite a lot for it.

Quite a lot for me, NZ$50 down, $3000 limit.

Its a hard-sell credit card for us poor people who couldn't even fill in

the regular bank form. I've tried and I get stuck at the third space which

is quite long and in it I am meant to describe my "annual income." I find

the question in this context generates a bleak flash of hopelessness

followed by a wry and rebellious humour.

Anyway, I got on some mailing list and now I'm offered this card and I hope

it will generate me a credit rating without costing money

I bought the plane tickets to visit my fruit picking son with the card, and

telephone transfered money to cover from my no.2 account.

I think I'm poor when I read the consumer magazine saying my bank is

ripping me off, and I don't have the energy/time to fix it. Its not really

poor moneywise, more a spirit thing.

Luckily I have some practice at letting go in meditation, so mostly I am

not FEELING poor, but am I? by some national benchmark? do I rate below the

poverty line?

That feels below the belt. I try hard, I and my loved ones are fed and

clothed and vetted. I'm including the mangy mongrel Hugo in this, can't be

helped, he's just there.

Something that really helps me is that my kids have become self sufficient

with some enthusiasm, and now they are not making demands on me but they

are giving me lots of stuff to keep my spirit bright.

Maybe bright is more the opposite of poor than wealthy is.

Fortunate would be another word difficult to reconcile with poor. Thinking

literally, we were certainly poor when we lived on a bull farm in a house

with no internal walls. The previous occupants were geese. The current

occupants: my partner, our son, two other couples, two more children. We

had a sack of rice, there was watercress in the creek and unlimited geese

on the hills which could be run down by the men. The women were busy

keeping the babies separate from the bulls and boiling huge kettles of

water in which to scald the geese, prior to plucking.

Gutted and tegel-like, in specially purchased plastic bags, the geese could

be swapped for vegetables with a neighbour. A local Ngapuhi man, he was a

small-scale market gardener and wild-food enterpreneur.

There were blackberries for wandering mums and kids to pick, and Ralph

restored another neighbour's antique table in exchange for milk.

The man who let us live in the old whare on his bull farm was Mr

Greenfield, a devout seventh day adventist. He and his family left us

alone. Their woman were flat out, preserving the bounty of late summer

while the blokes tended the range. It was paradise, a game where the

farmer really was Mr. Greenfield and food was there for the taking. When

there is youth and health and a belief in choice, walking to town, picking

mushrooms, using herbs from the roadside is joyful poverty.

We were looking for jobs and planting gardens, so caught up in the high we

chose not to notice the signs. The divisions, the obsessive projects, the

question of who owned Wendy's single parent benefit, where to put Wanda's

1500 books and Kees's pottery kiln, the constant rescuing of Joshu's baby

duck from Sasha's small terrier, the imminent arrival of Wendy's criminal

brothers....

I had applied for a job at the furniture factory, and it seemed 80% sure

thing. Then Kees put his arm through the wall.

Over the years of cummunal living, I think the hardest thing to cope with

can be differences in childrearing methods.

Kees and Wanda had raised Lily on a theory of immediate and coordinated

response. To a whimper, to a tantrum, to a moan. She woke through the

night. We all woke through the night. Kees loved her with all his heart but

he was so sleepless and angry, testosterone and conditioning overcame him

and he had to hit. So he smashed his arm through the lining boards. Luckily

we lived in a country with free hospital care for all, or I think Kees and

Wanda, and us as their friends, would have felt really poor right then.

The commune of our dreams was not working - some of us had to go. Six of

us in fact - Kees, Wanda Richard, Joshu Lily, the muscovy duckling, the

saanen goat and I think I remember a white cat. The grownups made plans and

fortune favoured us. A house appeared, about 700kms south. In farmland,

near a town with work, and an old mate of Kees. The pevious occupants were

not messy birds, but friends who had a fire ready for us. It was cheap and

connected to services.

To shift the books, the pottery kiln, the water tank, the woodstove and so

on, we borrowed a truck from the compassionate Greenfield. The load needed

to be driven to town and transferred to a railway wagon. I was a woman,

healthy and bursting with energy. Under normal circumstances I would be

hanging about with the kids. Kees was really tired from a year past of hard

times . He got to hang out with the kids and I got to wear overalls and

travel in the cab of the truck and be PHYSICAL. It was free and fun and

hard work and made me feel rich in my very arteries and veins.

Wanda and I hitched south with the kids and there are two more things to

mention, before we get to the intersection of this story and the next.

First, in Hamilton, the really nice truckdriver. Middle aged, solid,

charming but not sleazy. When he put us down - we were already standing on

the road - he asked if we were ok... offered $10. We said no, we were OK.

I thought he was nice, the sort of guy who gives me faith in the human

race. Wanda said he reminded her of her father.

I knew her father was a drunken oaf who still beat his wife and had

terrorised herself, & her sister and dragged them along on serial

geographics.

-That father?

-Yes, he'd be like that, to strangers. Yes.

It started me thinking.

Second, was a moment , later in the day. A moment of poverty. It was

getting dark, by the side of the road at Ohaingaiti. Ohingaiti is known for

having a name which gives 10 year olds on long car journeys something to

joke about. Ohingaiti is nothing but a few big sheds in a landscape of

trees and fields, intersected by a the main trunk and State Highway one,

100ks from Palmie which was new terrirory to me, and our destination.

It is getting cold, a long way south in the middle of the island.

Wanda is in indian cotton and the kids have short pants and little kid

gumboots. They do not own any other shoes.

For just that moment, as the shadows thicken between the trees I notice

their bare legs, their raggy jackets and I feel poor and scared.

Then a truck driver stops and I change up, rediscover shortsighted faith.

Lora Mountjoy
Wellington, New Zealand
Spring 2000
Poverty Pudding