A Day In The Life of Poverty I am a girl living in an informal settlement. Every morning when I wake up I wish I am lying on a comfortable bed in a lovely house. I open my eyes and see the holes in the roof of our shack. I am yet again disappointed,it is the same as all the other days before. When I realise the reality, the misery of another day of hardship meets me again. I get up from my water stained mattress and look around our home. My mom sleeps on a blanket on our carpet which is handed down in our family. It is just my mum and I because the only job my dad could get was in Mpumalanga, and he still has to keep himself alive plus send us money and he suffers from HIV so he has to buy medicine for himself. His job is to collect crops and sell them, but the supermarket is 50 km away so he has to use a bus to go most of the way, get a taxi and still go all the way back. He comes home every third year for Christmas and it my favourite time of year because I get to see him and he brings fruit and Christmas pudding. Every month he sends us one hundred rand but he needs a bit extra due to his sickness. We don’t have much money. I don’t have a nearby dad. It is tough thinking about how much something costs before you ask for it. My mom works hard too. She sews carpets handmade. The carpets are really big and she is one person who does it so it takes a really long time to sew one. Keep in mind she also has to pay for all the wool and needles. I love school and learning. When I am older I want to become an actress. I wish one day I could go to a university of drama and arts. My mum says I will become an actress and I will be rich, famous even prettier than I already am, and even though with all my heart I want to believe her, I can’t. I want there to be more universities so we can look forward to a career each day at school. On the way to school we have to get over a big river with domed and slippery stepping stones. The rocks are very slippery and people have died or injured themselves crossing the river. The only way to cross the river is on these stones. I hope they can put a sturdy bridge over the river so we can cross or even better, a safer way to get to school. We call the river “the blood waters” because whenever someone falls the sharp rocks cut directly through their flesh and the water fills with bright red blood, you can even see it drifting to the deeper waters. My friend Mayelia died yesterday morning on the way to school. She slipped off one of the rocks, she tried her best to swim but the rocks cut through her flesh in too many places so she died from a great loss of blood. There is one class in our grade. There are fifty one children in my class. At school the furniture is extremely uncomfortable. Some people have to sit on buckets in our class. I am lucky because I get a chair and an even bigger bonus my mum made my chair padded and comfortable. I have seven people at my desk. I don’t have much space only enough for a tiny pencil case and a book. My teacher is Miss Mary and she absent at least once a week. She can’t pay attention to all of us because of the number of kids in my class. I want there to be more classes and schools so there can be less children in my classroom. At break time we either eat our lunch, if there is lunch or we play games. We don’t have a playground, we just have a tiny bit of land with no grass but it’s half full of garbage anyway. I want our school to have a proper playground with a field or a jungle gym, even a community park wood be fun. It isn’t the cleanest place in our so called “township” but I agree it is full of trash. My mom and I are one of four lucky families that have a toilet but most of the other families relieve themselves in pits in the ground. There are some families who share rows of toilets in plastic cubicles. What is the most tragic is when people die of drowning in the pits and this happens more often than you think. When you are sick it is difficult to get to the hospital. There is a public hospital but you have to wait at least six hours to let the doctor see you. Last time I was nauseous and the doctor only saw me five hours later then we came. I want the government to build more hospitals so we don’t have to wait so long to go to the hospital. A lot of people in our “township” have HIV. A lot of people with HIV need proper doctors but they can’t all be seen in one day. The waiting area is always full of people and if their sickness is contagious more people will get sick. There is one doctor per three thousand patients! Everyone thinks that is crazy but for us it is the norm. My dream one day is to be able to go just once to a private hospital. Thank you for reading this. I hope these changes will be effected and poverty will be eradicated.