Since Monday I have been participating in a global poverty campaign, designed to raise awareness of poverty levels in the world, to raise money for CARE, which supports poverty reduction programmes all over the world, and to experience in some small measure what it is to live below the poverty line, for five days.
I have never written a blog before, but the reason I took this challenge was to hopefully inspire some thought in others, and to make a meaningful act. I don't have lots of money to personally support every worthy cause, but I can make sacrifices, if I am inspired or motivated to do so; and so...to tell anyone who is interested, what I have gained through this experience so far, let me start by giving you the blurb from the Live Below the Line Web Site in case you are not familiar with it.
Live Below the Line is an incredible awareness and fundraising campaign that empowers those who want to eradicate extreme poverty within the next generation. Started in Australia in 2010, the movement quickly spread across 3 continents and is now catching on in the US. (and hopefully the Caribbean) :)
1.4 BILLION people are forced to live every day on $1.50. Food, drink, health expenses, housing, transportation, education - all living costs must be covered by this amount. It's a feat impossible to imagine - but it's the reality for nearly one quarter of the world's population. The good news is we can effect change in this area.
May 16 – 20, 2011, is Live Below the Line Week. During those 5 days, thousands of people across the world (Including me) will spend just $1.50 per day on food. In doing so, they will bring the issue of extreme poverty to the attention of their households and workplaces.
We'll all be challenged. We'll all struggle without caffeine. And we'll all have that not-quite-full feeling for 5 days. But we will do so because there are 1.4 billion people for whom doing without is not a choice, and that situation must change.
The Live Below the Line campaign will make a difference. So rise out and show your support: SIGN UP to Live Below the Line today!
The Web Site to my Live Below Page is:
http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1138465&langPref=en-CA
If you want to learn more, or even better, make a donation.
Today is the fourth day, and I don't see any donations pouring in, but then, I have not been very vocal about what this experience has been like thus far, so let me rectify that this evening.
I started this event by planning out my meals in advance, and buying staples I knew I would be able to make meals with to get me through the week, with a very demanding job, and wanting to still be able to function in my normal capacity....so I bought $15 Barbados worth of food, mostly rice and peas, and cooked Sunday and Wednesday and have been able to avoid all the temptations and stick to just those foods and water and a single tea bag per day.
But the food itself is only a very minor part of the week's journey. It is basic and probably much more than what a person truly living under extreme, poverty could afford. The real challenge is to consider the reality beyond what you are doing. So what, I have to give up vegetables and seasoning and any form of drinks....other than water and sugarless tea...that is not the point of taking the challenge....it is just the first act.
Consider that at any time I knew I could reach in the fridge or cupboards and eat other foods if I really wanted to. I always had an option- a choice. If I was truly living under extreme poverty, as so many people do every single day, I would not have that option., so each day would not be faced in the same manner that I faced my boring but filling meals each day.
I did not have to spend the rest of my day thinking about how I was going to eat the next day, or the next meal.
I have access to clean, pipe-born water. I did not have to walk miles to find and carry water to cook my food.
I do not have to give this food to my children and go to sleep hungry, and hope for better tomorrow.
I have electricity. So I could afford to buy in bulk, cook a large pot and store the food for the next day.
I did not have to find someone to buy ice from, to store what I cooked for the following day.
I have a stove and gas to cook with. I did not have to find wood, or buy coal from my daily allowance in order to prepare my food.
Also, I see all the wonderful meals that others doing the challenge were able to afford on their $1.50 US a day, in the USA and abroad. And not to take away anything from all of these wonderful people who are taking the challenge with me, but if you lived in any of the developing or third world countries that contain most of the world's poorest populations, you would not be able to afford as much as you have been able to buy. Even here in Barbados, food prices are considerably higher than in the States and European countries. Dollars don't go very far when the only store you can get to is a little corner store where they have bought imported products at a cost three to four times what you would have paid in the USA, then added in their profits. I can not get Ramen 4 for $1.00 here; and meat and vegetables are out of the question on our budget.
So if it is that way for me, and I live in a moderately well to do country, imagine what the reality as for those persons who are fleeing a war, or persecution or are victims of natural disasters and have no settled place to live. No access to water, and when they do get water it may not be sanitary. Imagine bathing in the open with no privacy, from a bucket in the middle of the road. I don't have to go any father than Haiti to find those conditions.
So, lets imagine then....
Imagine that instead of waking up to heat up the boring rice and peas from your Live Below the Line staples, you wake up without being able to bath or brush your teeth or boil water for tea. There is no way to heat up food, and the ice you paid your last dollar for yesterday has melted already, so you have to hurry or the food from yesterday will spoil.
First you need to try and find water and fuel for a fire to cook. Bathing comes later. You see if there is anything growing that you can harvest for free, while you walk with an empty 5 gallon plastic pail that once held house paint or some other chemical to a local standpipe, or the nearest river. You carry a bag to hold anything you may be lucky enough to find to bring home with you.
If its a river, you can probably bathe there, and since you don't have tooth paste or shampoo, if you are very lucky there will be hibiscus or cactus growing nearby. Hibiscus can make tea and some forms of cactus can be eaten, so your bag can collect either of these things. If you cant afford to buy coal (that's if there is anywhere to buy it) then you need to collect dry wood along the way, and you need money from your budget for matches.
Lets say there is a stand pipe. Then you will have to wash out the bucket quickly, wasting as little water as possible, since all your neighbors are watching and they all need to get water from the same source so wasting water is not well regarded. Your actions are observed and fodder for gossip and criticism if you are not efficient enough. You then fill the bucket as high as you can without making it so full that you will spill it along the way home. If you are able, you can try to carry it on your head, otherwise you struggle up the road, one hand, then the other, as they get tired from the weight of the full bucket and your lower back strains and aches with the akward and heavy load.
You finally reach home, with water and wood, so now you can start a fire and begin to heat up what is left from yesterday to have breakfast.
Can you imaging how much time all of this took already? In order to even consider looking for work, or going to a job, you have to start your day by about 4:30 am to get these things done, eat and bathe and leave the house to see how you will make the next meal, the next and the next.
And there are no options. No choices. It is physically and mentally hard. Your focus in life shrinks from having goals and dreams and aspirations... You spend a large part of every day thinking how to improve your circumstances....how to get out of the day to day living for bare survival, but there is little hope.
Each day you take some action, hand write a dozen resumes and walk as far as your feet can carry you to distribute them to any business who may have a position. You spend as long as you can, and go as far as you can...If you have the money and can take a bus, you have to consider whether you will have enough money to get back there every day if you are luck enough to get a job. Any job.
And then you come back home, and carry water, and wash clothes by hand, and hang them to dry in the open...because you don't have a washer and drier and if you let the laundry pile up, it can get beyond your ability to get done during the time you have available in between looking for food and looking for work and carrying water and looking for supplies....
That and much worse are what I know to be poverty.
It is accepting a man in your household who abuses you and your children because he has the ability to provide food for you and them.
It is being vulnerable to the elements, to other people. To have little or no privacy or security. To see your children go hungry, or to be unable to send them to school because you cant send them on an empty stomach, or without food or money to buy lunch.
It is about doing homework in candlelight.
It is about being resourceful, and always trying not to loose hope for a better day to come. It is about putting aside pride and begging. About relying on the kindness of both friends and complete strangers.
I chose CARE to make donations to, because they have done work for many years in many countries to help alleviate poverty. If you make a donation this year, that is where the money will go, but I am hoping to build a regional arm of Live Below the Line by next year, so that the monies generated by any efforts of myself and my friends in the future will be directed back here to the Caribbean,
The day I just described is not just my imagination...I know it. There are many people in the region living out days like this every day. You may work with them and never know that they struggled to get to work every day this week, and have no money for lunch while you complain about your $15 BDS meal.
The same $15 BDS that I had as a budget for the whole week, breakfast, lunch and dinner....you will spend tomorrow on a meal of chicken, peas and rice, salad and macaroni pie. One meal.
Even if all you give is the equivalent of that one meal, give something today. I didn't take this challenge to show that I could.. I knew I could....although it was not easy. Going without seasoning, without vegetables, and eating carbs....which I normally keep to a minimum....foregoing chocolate and coffee, juice. Seeing these things everywhere and wanting them, I just considered that if I could not afford them, then I would have to go without them.
For me there is an end in sight. I can eat all the things I love once more on Saturday morning. But for 1.4 Billion people around the world, many of them right here in my own backyard, there is no light at the end of the tunnel unless the rest of us start doing something about it. Unless we all take notice, and realize that we are our brother's keepers.
Our children's future is dependant upon there being a world for them to raise their own children in one day.
The extreme poverty being faced by people, both far and near, does affect us. Our environment is affected by the destruction of rain forests for the creation of coal.
People living under extreme conditions become desperate over time, especially if others are dependant upon them and they feel helpless to provide for them...there will always be crime and violence directly related to poverty. And lack of education, lower skill levels- it is a cycle that spans generations if not broken.
So help me break it. Do something tangible today.
Thanks :)
KF
Great post! Well said!
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