Living on a dollar a day

For the past month I have been living on a dollar a day, which is below the international poverty line. A friend and I decided we wanted to see what it was like to live like most of the world who live in poverty, or as close to it as we can get. I calculated the cost of all the food, candles, propane, everything, even soap. The first week was by far the hardest—I craved sweet things, and was hungry all the time. I noticed a trend with my mood according to if I was hungry or full. When I was hungry it was hard to think about other things. As part of our experiment, Adam and I agreed that we could not ask for free food. But I never turned down any food that someone offered me! It didn’t matter what it was or if I was hungry, if someone offered food, I ate it. I lived almost entirely on lesheleshele (sorghum porridge) and roasted maize for the first week. After twelve days Adam dropped out, he said it making him really tired and not able to concentrate at work. His quitting made me less motivated, but I stuck with it. Although I no longer counted transport costs if it was for work purposes, I didn’t want it to affect my work. I also took two days off for Peace Corps get-togethers.

By the second week I was getting jealous of my host family’s food. A definite change from before, I did not really like papa, which is the staple food. Papa is bland, has almost no flavor and no nutritional value. But my perception of food changed, taste and nutrition no longer were my main concerns, but how filling and cheap a food was, and papa is both. I started eating the same foods, cooked the same way, as basically everyone in my village. By the end of the month, I thought that I could keep doing this, no problem, if I wasn’t worried about nutrition and getting so little protein (and could include chocolate!).

In the end I averaged how much I spent per day, and I came in under a dollar, just 84 cents a day. Though I don’t pretend that I truly know what it is like to live on the poverty line, I was just testing myself, I still had the option to stop and it was only a month. But afterwards I did find myself really missing the traditional foods, the papa and meroho (chopped and cooked cabbage), foods I didn’t really like before. Eating together with my neighbors, and sharing their food, creates a kind of closeness or bond that’s hard to describe. But I feel much closer to my host family and neighbors, sharing food with them and understanding their lives a little better.

SAFARI !

I recently got back from a Tanzanian safari with my parents. My parents very rarely travel outside of North America, so coming to Africa was a big leap. The trip was also a big deal for me , although for other reasons. It meant going on an airplane – I cannot really express how huge the contrast is between my rural village and an airport –everything is so well built, so seamless, so busy, so clean, so removed from the dirt beneath it, it was a bit overwhelming.

The goal of most of the people in our safari group was to see “the big five” or as many African animals as possible. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I was just as thrilled with the all-you-can-eat buffets and hot showers. But we did see more animals that I had ever expected. And we met some really wonderful people in our group. We went to Lake Manyara, the Serengetti and Ngorongoro Crater, and saw elephants crossing the road right behind us, cheetahs eating a zebra, a lion even brushed up against our jeep. And we saw the great migration—wildebeests and zebras stretching as far as you can see (with binoculars), the vastness was incredible. But I think my favorite “siting” or moment was when a flock of wild lovebirds flew over our jeep on the way to Ngorongoro Crater. I’d only seen lovebirds in pet store cages before, and thought of them as purely domestic. To see them flying freely in the wild, the flashes of green, yellow and red was breathtaking.

It did bother me a bit that we were able to get so close to all the animals because of their familiarity and comfort around people (or at least our jeeps). We were in some of the largest protected parks in Africa , but people were everywhere is seemed. Is there no where left where we haven’t made an impact? While it did bother me, it did not stop me from being as enthusiastic as anyone else in out jeep to see the next yet unseen animal.

We finished out vacation with a trip to Zanzibar. I love the old, winding streets of Stonetown, the capital city. It had beautiful Arabic architecture and a tropical, beachy feel. I went snorkeling and was fish I had only seen in aquariums. And had an incredible meal at a spics farm, with all local tropical fruits and fish (although my mom thinks she might have gotten a parasite from the water there…). Zanzibar felt magical. It also seemed much better off than Lesotho, the lodge close by me also felt magical when I stayed there with my parents, but it’s much harder to find places like that in Lesotho. The tourism industry is tiny compared to Zanzibar’s. Although the people of Lesotho, to me, seem much friendlier, or at least they have much better teeth and smile more. The trip was truly amazing, it helped re-energize me, and it was it was long enough that I was really ready to my site and my life here.