Poverty
I was born in post-soviet Kazakhstan in October 1996. I could’ve frozen to death during my first few months on this planet. In winter, temperatures dropped below -30° and power outages were all-too-common at that time. The winter of 1996 was no exception. I was wrapped into as many blankets as humanly possible to keep me warm — and alive?
When I was six, we moved to Germany. I always imagined it to be an amusement park but only the prior unknown mystery land of supermarkets lived up to expectations. I remember failing to comprehend how there can be so much different food in one place. Overwhelmed, I ate my first pack of sweets in the middle of the store.
To start off, I missed school enrolment and was several weeks late. I also never attended kindergarten in Kazakhstan. At the time of enrolment, I spoke not a word of German but quickly picked it up in school and made some German friends. Following your fourth year in primary school, you receive a recommendation for secondary school, with Gymnasium being the highest school, leading towards university. I had good enough grades and was considered intelligent, if not diligent with my work, or particularly hard-working. In four years, I learned to speak German fluently from zero, with some mistakes in spelling, an all-too natural phenomenon at that age. Still, the teacher voiced doubts as to whether my German and “general commitment to learning” was sufficient. In hindsight, an almost comical assessment.
Of course, I ended up going to a lower-level school. My mother trusted the teacher’s assessment — she was simply not equipped to question the decision. She had no education of her own, no knowledge of the German school system, no point of reference, and could by no means gauge the rippling and lifelong effects of such a choice. She was happy if I found any employment at all and a prospect of a normal job as a clerk or office worker (at that time, a very standard destination for those attending “Realschule”) was more than enough. Worst case, one could always change back to the higher school later on. In reality, that’s highly unlikely. Only about 10% of school changes are from a lower-level school to a higher-level school.
Being blue-collar workers in Kazakhstan, my mother and her husband met much the same destiny in Germany, with the added difficulty of speaking barely any German. We went from being poor in a very poor country (In Kazakhstan, we made money by renting out our flat to rich tourists during the Summer months and occasional blue-collar jobs) to being poor (extremely poor in relative terms) in a very affluent country. Don’t get me wrong, this was much preferred and we were happy with what we had.
In fact, my mother’s partner was all too happy with the change in scenery. He flat-out refused to learn German or find any meaningful employment. Suddenly, he found most manual labor demeaning and complained about his lack of German as a hindrance to him finding a real job, while, of course, not making any strides to learn German.
To receive unemployment benefits, one has to submit a minimum number of applications in Germany. I once read such an application and — in my childish naiveté — pointed out the numerous mistakes in the text, saying that no one will ever hire him that way. Only later did I understand: It was on purpose.
As a result of his unemployment and his inability to speak German, he was extremely bored, spending most of his life withering away in front of the TV which slowly led him down the road of emotional abuse. As I was not his biological son (something I had only found out much later) he began mentally and physically tormenting me to vent his frustrations. My mother, in effect, was a single parent long before she finally divorced him years later.
Poverty has many facets. Over time, one develops patterns of thinking and a certain habitus that haunt one until the end of one’s life. Sometimes, they have an almost humorous character. For instance, I love smoked salmon that we could never afford (2,50€ at that time) and completely overate on it when I had it in abundance. Today, I buy it proudly, without looking at the price.
Another, almost useful, side effect is that I know the price of every single good in a supermarket. Starting from a bottle of water and ending with a pound of meat. Every other purchase is weighed up against those internalized price tags. To this day, I refuse to order water at a restaurant. I just cannot spend 3€ on a glass of water in good conscience. Sometimes, I’ll invite everyone for dinner but will not order water for myself — my solitary rebellion.
I used to play football. I loved football. Football was my life. I’d wake up waiting to play football, spend the day playing football and go to bed watching football. For my birthday, I got a 30€ football that I played with until its literal disintegration. I had always wanted the World Cup 2006 ball (100€). On Christmas, I got FIFA 2008 — I played it until 2010. Other circumstances are much more tragic and far-reaching.
After visiting a friend and playing GameCube there, I had fallen in love with the idea of having one myself. I really wanted one and remember dreaming about what it’d feel like if my mother would walk into the room, for no apparent reason, and gift me one. I knew, of course, that this was beyond reach. I knew we simply did not have the money to buy one. In a bout of desperation and childlike hope I had found a solution: I’d simply start believing in Father Christmas again. I had long given up on that dream and was much too old anyway, of course but at that time, it just seemed like the only way to get a GameCube of my own. I was committed and even wrote a letter to Father Christmas with my wishes: a GameCube and the Digimon game we had played. It would remain the only wish list I would write in my life.
I think I broke my mother’s heart doing that. She knew that my wishes would never turn true. She tried to pre-emptively ease the pain, saying that my gift would be something “I did not expect but would still like, as I had always wanted it”. On Christmas Day, contrary to German tradition, I received my gift after waking up. It was an alarm in the shape of a football.
Being poor, one learns to suffer want and deprivation early. I had indeed once mentioned that I would like to have an alarm clock and I knew that my mother simply could not afford more. I tried my hardest to hide my disappointment — with moderate success.
I had always wanted cool football shoes. I played football all day. First merely outside, then in a club. First with my normal shoes, then with cheap football shoes. I always dreamt of the shoes on TV. Others had no such problems. I used to play with a guy called Kevin. He was a Schalke 04 fan (I still have an irrational dislike for that team) and always wore new and expensive football shoes. However, one day, that was no longer enough for Kevin and he battered a pair of blue Adidas against a rock in front of several people. When I asked him why he would do such a thing he replied that he wanted new ones. This pair was old and if they were damaged his parents would buy him new ones — and so they did. What a rift in lived experience.
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At some point, I was lucky enough to receive a pair of cool football shoes. It was a pair of orange Nike Mercury (I remember that to this day). I’ve had few moments of similar joy in my life. Radiating with joy and pride, I went to practice. It was not what I had hoped. I was made fun of with kids saying that I had surely bought them at Deichmann (a discounter for shoes), that I could not even afford them, that they were out of fashion anyway and much more. When I returned home from practice, my mother noticed a smell of urine. I had not noticed it although my whole bag had the stench of it. I don’t know whether it was human or animal urine but the smell was there and I never got rid of it. I wore my shoes, it was the only pair I had, humiliated.
During puberty, the fight for status among adolescents begins. Who has got the coolest clothes, the most expensive phone? Well, it was not me. I always wore the same clothes. Day in, day out. I was promptly made aware of this fact by my peers. My mother bought my clothes in cheap shops. No choice was awarded to me — there simply was no choice to be had. Functionality and price were deciding factors. Not for a second did I build any sense of self or identity from the clothes I wore. This process of self-realization as part of growing up was not afforded to me.
At some point, skating clothes were the name of the game. Everyone was wearing brands such as DC, Vans, Quicksilver and so on. Their price tags were absurd to me. 70€ and more for a pair of shoes? My shoes cost 20–30€. In a subconscious attempt at self-defense, I started telling people that I find brands stupid and I’d never wear them. This was vivid enough for a former classmate of mine to point out the branded clothes I was wearing almost a decade later when we meet by chance.
I had cool clothes once. I remember very clearly and to this day because my mother had allowed me to spend about 100€ on clothes. An unbelievable sum of money. After pondering how I could best translate this money into as much “status” as possible and days of research (I found a random coupon code online), I bought a pair of burgundy Nike SB Janoski for 70€, a bright-red Elements belt for 15€, and a simple Carhart wallet for 20€. That’s almost ten years ago and I remember it to this day. I wore the shoes for almost four years and used the wallet for more than six years. Unfortunately, the belt became very unfashionable quickly.
Around the age of 17, I lost a lot of weight. I can only say so much: There’s a good reason why poor children have much higher rates of obesity and are frequently overweight. My old clothes became baggy, I could not even wear them any longer. My mother gave me 60€ to buy a pair of trousers and a few tshirts. Around that time and for the first time in my life, I also started developing a sense of identity from my looks. Before, I was frequently mocked for it. Now, I even received an occasional compliment. As a result, I wanted to buy something that I really liked. I bought a dark-blue denim shirt from Jack & Jones for 40€. I returned home proud and showed the shirt to my mother. She was angry and sad that I had spend 40€ on a single shirt. How could I spend this much money on a single shirt? I wore that shirt for five years, from secondary school to university and I’d still wear it to this day if it still fit.
Following secondary school, many of my friends went to university. I could not believe it. “This idiot is going to study?!” — this was not malevolence. It was sheer incredulity. To me, attending university was reserved to the finest and the smartest specimen walking this planet. University was an abstract idea, accessible only to a very select, very intelligent, and very privileged group of people. The idea of attending university was so far-removed from reality that I literally failed to perceive it a possibility. There was never even a thought of going to university in my mind. To the contrary, the only signals I had ever received at that point came me from a lady working at the jobcentre (Arbeitsamt) as part of an initiative to get young people “on the right track” while they were still at school. She incessantly urged me to apply for a job — any job.
I never did and went to a “language school”. On the one hand, because I spoke English quite well, a curiously positive side effect of using the internet as a means of escape. On the other hand, because it presented me with the opportunity to delay making any meaningful choice about my future. When I enrolled, I was asked whether I’d like to learn Spanish or French. I replied that I am completely indifferent. I was to make a choice on the spot and I picked french for the sole reason that I had found the history of the French revolution intriguing. C’est la vie.
Making decisions was never my forte. Making decisions, being decisive is a skill like any other. It is cultivated over trial and error and an adequate number of opportunities to exercise this skill. Now, sadly, poverty does not offer an abundance of options. Most of your life is streamlined, most decisions are made for you. Like the example of clothing before, most of your leisure activities are dictated to you not by your interests, as you’re rarely ever able to explore them, but by the fundamental question of possibility (An equation of cost for the most part and knowledge to a lesser degree). Maybe it is a crude joke of the universe to then have the few decisions you make carry such monumental weight (e.g. your choice to attain higher education or join the workforce).
Poverty is inherited. It is a generational problem. This is strikingly obvious in the US, where a large part of the population was not only disenfranchised but enslaved and is now still dealing with its consequences. In places like Germany it is more insidious (e.g. when asked how they made their fortunes, two-thirds of Germans will answer with inheritance). However, poverty does not solely have a monetary dimension. When looking at poverty scientifically, we often refer to socio-economic backgrounds as a standard measure. Why? Because having a social support network and guidance can be equally as important, if not more important.
I never had any of that. I was a problematic kid at school and had to retake two years of school for pretty much the same reason: I was lazy, disinterested, and lacked conscientiousness. Why was that? I failed to think ahead. The future was abstract, something I was not concerned with. I was living for the here and now. I never learned to delay gratification, an essential skill in building discipline, simply because there was not that much gratification that I could delay to begin with. I never learned to weigh up options and make decisions because there were few decisions to be made. Were my learning deficits covered by private lessons? Absolutely not. No one ever told me that I could go to university. No one ever provided any guidance on what to do after school. During university, no one told me that placements would be essential on the German job market. No guidance from anyone, not parents, not family, not teachers.
I remember one teacher saying: “Alex, whatever you do, don’t waste your potential” and that’s probably the most encouraging thing I’ve heard in my life.
Don’t get me wrong: perhaps I am a lazy person by nature. Perhaps I was born with a lack of conscientiousness. Maybe I’m post-hoc rationalizing my educational achievements (or lack thereof) Who knows? Maybe. Did my socio-economic background help ameliorate my shortcomings? Not at all. Most of my “faults”, were, at least in part, informed by my upbringing.
What about never learning to eat with cutlery? During my first business dinner, I was mortified seeing all that cutlery in front of me. At home, we ate with a fork, that’s it. When I ate at friends’ I would use a fork and a knife. How was I supposed to know that you start “on the outer end” and work your words inwards? Imagine suffering the consequences of your upbringing so vividly in your job. Truly a surreal experience.
I remember my first girlfriend’s parents inviting me to dinner. That genuinely terrified me. Not because of her parents but because I was afraid of making a mistake during dinner. I panicked and read through heaps of articles on proper etiquette. Luckily, we ate Pizza.
I showed an earlier draft to friends. The most common response: where’s the positive message in all that? A previous draft had an appeal to the German school system. Fuck that. There’s no positive message because I am lucky. I am extremely fortunate and have had enormous luck to get to where I am now. Writing a classic “rags to riches” story is not only dull, it is ignorant. Most people don’t make it and while it is comforting to believe that everyone can make it, it ignores the fundamental realities of life.
